by Gary Wells
The "Virtual Gallery" project was begun in 2002 under a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College. The grant supported the exploration of technology in the context of the humanities classroom and humanities teaching. A key part of the project was to examine the collaboration of humanities faculty and students on technology projects that had significant content or research value, or which had a direct impact on teaching methodologies and pedagogy. This particular project was a follow-up on an earlier technology project, "Painting in Paris," that examined the use of digital information and user interface design to create "self-teaching" works of art. The current project expands the interactive and collaborative aspects of the "Painting in Paris" project.
This project was conceived as a module to the course "Nineteenth Century European Art." The basic idea was to allow students to construct collections of images, with annotations, that could then be shared, discussed, and commented upon. These "virtual galleries" would serve as both individual and collective focal points to examine the art of the nineteenth century. By allowing students to decide upon the criteria for their individual gallery collections, they would have control over the themes, issues, styles, and artists that the entire class would be exposed to. These "virtual galleries" would supplement the materials that students were introduced to in the other parts of the course, and would reflect their interests in conjunction with or oppostition to the teacher's guided selections.
Page last modified 3/20/03; Copyright © 2003 by Gary Wells, Ithaca College
The first step in this project was taken during the Spring 2002 semester offering of "Nineteenth Century European Art." Students were asked to assemble a collection of images based on a theme or issue of their choice. Each image was accompanied by a brief annotation, and the entire group was prefaced by a statement that explained the reasoning behind the selections. This first step was a test of the ability of students to find, collect, comment upon, and submit a group of digital images following specific guidelines. At the same time, this step was a trial to ascertain the amount of time necessary for the instructor, with the help of student assistants (Crystal W. Prince and Renee Miller), to gather the submitted images and put them into an accessible format for the entire class to share. As a trial run in working out the issues of cataloging and formatting a large number of digital images in a short period of time, this first effort was focused on problem identification and resolution rather than creating a fully functioning final product with all aspects of the projects implemented.
Parallel to the first classroom effort was an exploration of different software solutions to the problem of formatting and presenting the images in a meaningful way. Several different "concept galleries" were created in order to facilitate this process. To see some examples of the gallery concepts, click here (available soon).