WORKSHOP: Art History and Social Media Conversations for Consideration
This workshop was facilitated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison and Samantha Chang (Department of Art History University of Toronto)
The #GettyMuseumChallenge and #TussenKunstenQuarantaine, prompted by the global pandemic lockdown in March 2020, generated thousands of social media entries worldwide. The 54,709 Instagram posts taking up the Getty’s challenge demonstrate social media’s ability to reach new audiences and communities beyond the academe. How do we use social media as an engagement, pedagogical, and recruitment tool as art, art history, and visual culture educators and professionals?
This workshop offered a space for critical discussions that reflect on the complexities of adopting social media as pedagogy in the learning environment. We discussed strategies for reaching and retaining audiences from underrepresented communities and incorporating materials and voices in and between arts organizations, communities, and institutions. Workshop participants contributed to a collaborative open resource on social media and art history.
This 90-minute workshop was organized into three sections: engagement, pedagogy, and recruitment. Engagement addresses strategies for community-building amongst students, between students and instructors, and amid instructors. Pedagogy examines methods for diversifying teaching content and generating an inclusive learning environment. Finally, recruitment explores initiatives for reaching, connecting, and retaining audiences within and beyond academia. How does social media fundamentally alter the way we teach, learn, and engage with art history? In each of the three sections, the co-facilitators and participants contributed to the collaborative open resource in breakout room activities.
The working document from the session, which includes summaries, outcomes from collaborative exercises, links, and further reading suggestions, can be found here: Art History and Social Media Google Doc
The chat from the live session is here: Session Chat
Have a watch of the live session recording!
View the slides below, or download the slide deck PDF.
Elizabeth Rice Mattison is an art historian specializing in the art of the medieval and Early Modern world. She defended her PhD at the University of Toronto in November 2020. Her research considers the art and architecture of the Low Countries, France, and Germany in cross-cultural context. Her dissertation, “Reforming Sculpture: The Prince-Bishopric of Liège, 1468–1566,” examines the development of the idea of sculpture in the long sixteenth century in the context of Protestant anxieties about images and the immigration of artists. She examines the mobility of objects and artists, the reception of the past, the relationship of the foreign and the local, and iconoclasm. Her articles have appeared in Gesta, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Burlington Magazine, several edited collections, and museum publications. She is currently editing a volume on exchange in the sixteenth-century Prince-Bishopric of Liège. New research includes the study of female sculptors in the Low Countries, the role of medieval sculpture in early twentieth-century nationalism, and affective engagement with miniature devotional objects.
Samantha Chang is a PhD Candidate from the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto, where she holds a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) Doctoral Award, a Faculty of Arts and Science Top (FAST) Doctoral Fellowship, and a Mary H. Beatty Fellowship. A professional flutist and conductor, Samantha graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, and she is a fellow of the Trinity College London and the London College of Music. Samantha’s research explores the conceptual relationships between visual arts and music in the early modern period, specifically those of artistic identity, temporality, synaesthesia, and performativity. Her current research project examines the representation of music in the painter’s studio. Samantha is the Microteaching Coordinator and a Humanities Trainer at the Teaching Assistants’ Training Program, Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation at the University of Toronto.
