“Art history is about you being the voice, talking about someone who no longer has a voice, the artist, the artist's patron, the context of the work.” - Shelley Zuraw
To accompany her recent accomplishment in being named as one of five Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professors, Shelley Zuraw was interviewed by UGA’s Marketing and Communications Division. She speaks to her experiences as a Professor of Art History and about why she teaches.
Interviewer: What is your favorite aspect of teaching students? Why do you do it? What do you love about teaching?
Shelley Zuraw: I suppose it's because it reminds me of what I loved about being a student. I can remember the first art history class I took and my eyes just exploding when I saw these wonderful things, and I want (students) to have that same experience. So, when I hit something that I can actually remember seeing in class, I think, "I remember when I saw this in class and it was so exciting," or "I remember how great this was to know." That kind of seeing and understanding - things that you don't know from high school, that you don't necessarily know from home, that aren't things you grow up with, that can change the way you look at the world - I find that very exciting.
Interviewer: What inspires you most about your field and the field of art?
Shelley Zuraw: I hate to sound like a psychologist because I'm really not, but I like the combination (it’s not very contemporary) of beauty and order. And Renaissance art is a very interesting combination of things that are beautiful, but the beauty requires harmony, balance, even colors, and that appeals to me. I am inspired by trying to understand how an artist got from a visual tradition that he inherited from generations before to an idea that expresses the same thing with that kind of beauty and harmony.
Interviewer: How does it feel to be able to then turn around and try and get these students inspired by the same thing?
Shelley Zuraw: That, to me, is the most exciting thing. Every once in a while, I'm in a class and I realize, I hit it. Today, we're all on the same page… On Monday, I was so in the middle of trying to make it exciting that all of the information seemed to fit into the visual package. They were nodding their heads and they could see that, yes, it was important! That there was a gem that was copied on the helmet of the dead guy, at the bottom of the thing, that was then quoted in the courtyard where the bronze was installed for 10 minutes! Normally they're like, "How many pieces of that factual line-up do I need to know?" But when you get that whole package, what we know and what it looks like and what the artist was trying to do all as one, that's very exciting for the students and for me to see.
Interviewer: How have students responded to your unique teaching methods?
Shelley Zuraw: I would suppose what is unique about my teaching method is how traditional it is on some level. I like the idea of the students in a dark room not looking at me, but instead having their eyes trained on the works of art. I like the works of art to be appearing on the screen... almost as if they could see them in person and that I'm just this distant voice, helping them see it better. That's really the way I was taught. And these days, I think it's a unique style of teaching. I think people do that less and less. I think it allows students not to constantly feel like they have to perform and be active, but instead to be looking with their eyes and thinking as they absorb information and then reconsider it.
Interviewer: When and how did you know that you wanted to become a professor?
Shelley Zuraw: I didn't know that I could do this and that I would like it. What I liked about it, and what I tell my students when they ask me whether they should go into teaching is this, "The trick is you have to believe that you can wake up in the morning and be excited about thinking about these works of art this year, next year, 10 years, and 20 years, because if you don't like what you're talking about, if you don't like those things, those artists, that moment, and getting up and talking about it to a whole new group every year doesn't amuse you, doesn't make you excited to think about it, you'll never get through." And, every time the slides go up, I think, "Oh, wow. I do love this," Because I really do. I might look like an idiot, I imagine now, but, I really do like looking and thinking about these works of art.
Interviewer: How do you feel that your students have grown as a result of taking your courses?
Shelley Zuraw: Well, I think what I want them to see is the fact that they can do this and have new ideas and make a contribution to a field that is not central to their own life, and I think that's the hardest step. When you're talking about contemporary literature, contemporary art, or contemporary music, you live that world. When you're talking about a man who died in 1568 with a hair shirt that he had left on for 20 years (this is Michelangelo), so it was attached to his skin and had to be peeled off because he felt he was a sinner ... It's very hard to say, "I understand that man and I can put myself in his shoes and see why he did something." The fact that they can do that, that they can make that leap and understand somebody different from themselves, that is something I want them to know, deeply.
The other thing is I want them to see that they can build an argument. They can start with a work of art, do some research, think about what we know and what we don't know, and come up with a story, a narrative, all on their own. That, that is amazing.
Interviewer: Can you describe some of your favorite moments with your students?
Shelley Zuraw: I have had more than one graduate student come crying in my office after their first day of teaching, saying, "I can never do this. They hate me. I hate them. It's terrible, this wall of unhappy faces." And that process of saying, "Oh, absolutely, you can do this. It's perfectly possible. Do it in front of me," that - seeing students gain confidence in talking about works of art - is the thing that I enjoy most watching them discover.
I've tried to have my middle level, 3000 level students, give presentations, uh, in smaller classes because, again, what they are able to say and communicate with the slides, without necessarily writing it down, but to talk to their friends about what they learned, it's exciting for them and it's exciting for their friends. And it is a very different way of looking at the work of art than what I might've done, but it opens up a different window on what they brought to it. I have universally found that to be the most rewarding thing, watching someone else stand up there and say, "I can be the teacher for the next 10 minutes or one hour. I can share what I've learned and what I like."
I've had students say, "I, I can't do this. I won't do this. I'm scared of people. I'm shy. I'm this. I'm that," but ... and I say, "That's why we're in the dark and you don't have to worry about people staring at you. They're going to be staring at the work of art. You just tell them what's interesting about it." And it's amazing how good they are, amazing, especially when they say, "I can't do it. I won't do it."
Interviewer: Public speaking is some people’s worst fear.
Shelley Zuraw: This is my firmly held belief. Public speaking is about you. Art history is about you being the voice, talking about someone who no longer has a voice, the artist, the artist’s patron, the context of the work. You don't have to be worried about what people think of you because it's not about you. It's about Michelangelo, it's about the artist. It's about the work of art. And if you can remove yourself from the story and just be the communicator of someone else's story, I think it makes it easier. I hope.
Interviewer: Can you talk to me a little bit about, active learning methods that you incorporate in your coursework?
Shelley Zuraw: Well, when I taught in Italy I made the students give oral presentations in front of the work of art, which was the best thing in the whole world because they'd never seen it before, in most cases. Their eyes light up and then they're talking and trying to look back at the work. That was really wonderful. Here, it's a little harder because we don't have a whole lot of Italian Renaissance art in the back closet. I lean on the museum [the Georgia Museum of Art] because they have some collections that I can use. I did a course on Renaissance and Baroque drawing. They have a very interesting private collection of Renaissance and Baroque drawings, really excellent ones. The students, as part of the writing process, worked through reading exhibition catalogs, how you write a label, how you put that together, and they did their own little exhibition.
A long time, I won't say when, I did a class on Rembrandt's prints. The museum has quite a number of prints that, if they're not by Rembrandt, they're late pulls of Rembrandt plates. This year is the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death, so I'm going to try to teach a Rembrandt course in the fall that allows students to work with these prints and try to figure out what they're looking at, if it's a 17th century print or an 18th century pull, and what Rembrandt was trying to do. So hopefully we'll be able to do some work with actual prints, as opposed to photographs transformed into PowerPoints and seen in a dark room. I think that will be great for them. If we can find a room, they'll be able to do their own little exhibition, which is really fun because then they get to pick the print they want to write on, decide what they want to say about it. They work back and forth so that, when you walk through the room, the information on one print introduces the ideas that lead to the next print, so we have a certain amount of fun putting that together.
Interviewer: Can you describe the importance of art, what it means to keep studying it and why it's important to society?
Shelley Zuraw: Why art is important to society… I will be honest. There are two answers. In my field, where most of the art had a very explicit religious context, it's much more difficult because, of course, the religious context is different now than it was in 1550. But I think art allows people to see the world through someone else's eyes, rather than looking out there and saying, "Oh, that's God's nature. That's nature. I recognize it." Someone in a certain sense is synthesizing it, highlighting for you what's beautiful, what's important. And art gives you access to your own life because you're looking at someone else's recreation of it. I think it transforms the way that you look at the world around you, just literally how your eye understands the things that you pass. Now you can talk about it being an example of creativity and an inspiration, but you know, when you look at a painting of the Madonna and Child from 1450, I don't know if your first response is, "Oh, wow, that's how I can be creative”.
Interviewer: Can you explain what you drew you to the Renaissance and the Baroque as well?
Shelley Zuraw: Well, the Baroque is kind of the extension of that, quite honestly. I poorly used a German word, which is Ordnung. Things should be in the exact order they're supposed to be in. And I'm not good at time change. I like order and when you look at Renaissance art, you can always tell if someone's cut the picture because the center line is perfectly obvious. There should be a clear center, which means there's the same amount on the left as on the right. That sense of order, right, the clarity - you know where the center is, you know what's to the side - I really like it. It makes me a very happy person. And, for some reason, that was just easier for me to grasp than all over the place, Medieval art.
I also worked in Rome. I did most of my work in Rome, and when I came here my argument was that I could really do Baroque because Roman Baroque art is really a kind of fervid expression of Roman Renaissance art. In other words, Bernini is really a second-generation Michelangelo. I tried that on the students and they don't believe me, but I still think it's sort of true.
Interviewer: What is the difference for students between seeing something on a screen as opposed to experiencing it in its rightful place, in person?
Shelley Zuraw: I think it is life-changing. Seeing an object as it was intended to be seen lets you see what the artist was trying to do and trying to communicate. Seeing a photograph of it is just a second artist's (if it's a good photograph) version of something. So for instance, I always show students, at the beginning of class, a slide of two paintings by a 14th-century Sienese painter named Duccio. One is 12 feet tall and the other one is the famous painting that the Met bought that's small. When I put two photographs up on the screen, you cannot tell the difference because, on the screen, they look exactly the same, and if you don't see that one is an intimate thing that you could cradle close to your heart and the other one was intended to be seen from the front door of a church as you walked in, you don't get the intention of the artist at all.