 Hello, good evening. Welcome everybody. Welcome to everybody who is tuning in from home I think that there are a lot of people online tonight and welcome to our Participants who I will be introducing in a minute. My name is Martha Lucy. I'm deputy director for research interpretation and education here at the Barnes Very excited for tonight's conversation This is the third program in our conversation series the Barnes then and now Which we have organized as part of our centennial celebration and this series is really kind of a state of the barns Where we are reflecting on how we as an institution are carrying out our founders legacy tonight's dialogue focuses on the progressive art Art education program pioneered by Dr. Albert Barnes about a hundred years ago ago Working closely with the philosopher John Dewey Dr. Barnes chartered his foundation in 1922 during a time when art museums were really positioned in our society as temples of art Places where cultural sophisticates would go to have elevated aesthetic experiences Barnes wanted to break that mold to make art more accessible and less rarified And one of the ways that he did this was by developing an approach to teaching called the objective method his intellectual partner in developing this method was the Legendary violet demesia with whom many of you may have probably had the opportunity to study What we're going to talk about tonight is Well first, what is the objective method? Why was it so progressive a hundred years ago? And can it still be considered progressive today? What are the benefits of the objective method and what are its limitations? especially in 2022 given how much the methodologies of art history have evolved Our participants tonight are Rika Burnham and Bill Perthes as well as Monique Scott our moderator welcome Rika Burnham is a leading theorist Rika is on the left here she is a leading theorist and Practitioner of gallery teaching and a legend in the field of museum education and that is not an exaggeration She really is prior to her current position as A lecturer at Columbia University She served as head of education at the Frick for many years and Project director for the teaching Institute and museum education at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago She is the co-author of Teaching in the Art Museum Interpretation as experience which is a widely acclaimed volume published in 2011 Which won a prose award for best education book from the Association of American Publishers? And I would like to mention that one of the chapters in this book is Focused on this institution. It's called the Barnes Foundation as a place for teaching My colleague Bill Perthes is the Bernard C. Watson director of adult education at the Barnes As a scholar Bill's research focuses on American modernism and the abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell He has taught at Paffa at Westchester University at Villanova and of course here at the Barnes the fact that the objective method is alive and well today and Is being taught in such an intelligent way by our faculty people like Cailan Jewel? owes entirely to Bill His ability to interpret and communicate that method in a way that makes sense and trust me This is not easy to do Has been key to the success of our adult education program over the last five or six years He is beloved by our students Our moderator tonight is Monique Scott Monique is a great friend of the Barnes You can find her in in the galleries often with her with her students from Bryn Mawr She is associate professor of anthropology and the director of the museum studies program at Bryn Mawr She's also a consulting scholar for the Africa section at the Penn Museum her work focuses on the politics of display and Her current project analyzes the representation of Africa at Philadelphia museums, so please Welcome our our participants and enjoy it and I think we have some photos here to illustrate the the conversation and after that introduction I have to ask you Bill to communicate the objective method in a way that makes sense to all of us I'll try to do my best so Barnes is unique in many ways, but one of the ways was that He was not content just to collect art Coming from a background in science and medicine He needed to know what art was he needed to know why he responded so So immediately to art and why it seemed to be something that has compelled humankind for for so long And so coming out of that background of medicine and science He thought that the best way to do so was to come up with an approach That would be modeled on scientific method and apply it to to art to painting in particular He he drew on the theories and criticism of his own day And was well aware of what other theorists were writing He used Many of the same ideas as they did particularly in Focusing on the formal qualities of works of art so looking at color line light space And trying to understand the nuances The nuanced way in which artists used those means but as a scientist He needed it to be more than just that it needed to be more than just An accumulation of observations Like if one goes to a physician if all the doctor could do is to list all of the things that he or she saw wrong or That might be an issue with you you you wouldn't be satisfied with that right you go because you want you want some sort of Diagnosis and that's what he wanted his method to be able to do was to draw a conclusion so Not just observing facts of formal qualities and works of art But asking what are the cumulative effects of those? What's the result of that? Why did the artist choose to do it that particular way? and then importantly to be able to To have a language to be able to articulate to other people What we see what we perceive because a big part of what this methodology is it's not about just us doing it on our own but doing it amongst others and Learning from each other's perceptions Barnes understood that we're all unique individuals and though and because of that we will see different things in a work of art but he also believed that as human beings as people that are Growing up in a somewhat similar environment really no matter where that was or what time that was we share as human beings we share similar experiences that are rooted in sort of core Qualities so what he called and what mr. Masio called broad human qualities qualities that are really very basic things like solidity and monumentality and So ultimately the conclusions we try to draw from works of art are articulated in those ways in Terms and in language that can be understood by most anybody Thank you And Rika given your expertise. Can you? Give us some examples of teaching with the Barnes method. You've done it Across your career and vastly and also at the Frick something similar Can you share a little bit about that? Thank you everyone for being here tonight, and thank you Martha for the beautiful introduction and this visionary series of conversations and the extraordinary idea that Extraordinary idea that we're looking to the past in order to to enrich the future and to preserve what was great about the past for that very purpose I found my way to the Barnes in a rather unusual way. I am Like so many museum educators practicing in this country today. There's no central Way to prepare for being a museum educator. We come to it some of us as art historians Some of us as artists some of us as people who Specialized in the new field of museum studies But there's no central way to prepare for being a museum educator and even less there's no central way to prepare for museum teaching and What makes the Barnes method unique is that it was kind of it was a codified way to teach and it could be shared with other Teachers, it's not the only example in the history of museum education, but it's an extremely important one because of the universal dream of Making art accessible to everyone So so my own path Coming here was that I was trying to theorize What the gallery teaching I was practicing at the Metropolitan Museum where I was a museum educator for 25 years before the Art Institute and before the Frick collection and I was trying to theorize what I was doing and found Dewey and the whole notion of an experience as a goal to which I should be working and that resulted in An invitation from Robin McClay who was then director of education at the Barnes Who called me out of the blue one day and said one of our instructors has taken ill You're working on John Dewey. John Dewey was a great friend and colleague of Albert Barnes for 30 years filled For 30 years, would you come and substitute once a week for the rest of the semester? And so that was how I came to the Barnes in a most unusual way not as a student But as a teacher jumping into this place where there was this very Very deep and very profound and very thought about and very revered teaching practice known as the method And revered and was it rigid? Could you also talk a little bit about? perhaps the approach of Dewey and artists experience Versus are compared to the objective approach of Barnes. I am still grappling with the Dewey and notion of an experience with what was happening in the method and how they May or may not have been compatible and I think It was pretty interesting the way Bill just described the method makes it sound rather capacious I found in my experience coming in as an outsider from the Met I found it rather restrictive and codified and Use the word rigid Monique. I'll I'll go with that And and that it had to be practiced in a in accordance with a very strict set of regulations and I always had the feeling that if you strayed from an analysis of the formal elements and something like meaning crawled out onto the table it was It was over and you had strayed into what I would think of as doing in territory who where The the accumulation of your conversation your perceptions your emotions Started to to to be like a nimbus around a work of art in which your experience Was glorious and and in a sense never-ending it came to what Dewey called a sense of fulfillment or a temporary resting place But with an artwork experiences never Never-ending So Bill Can you walk us through the Objective method a little more just in case people want to be familiarized with it in in terms of actually looking at a piece of art and With specifics not with the rigidity because I will eventually ask about how it has been adapted and updated by the barns, but I think it would be useful or helpful to actually to walk through sure so Remarkable thing about the the method is and I think Something that validates it in many in many ways is that Barnes used it not only in looking at and Evaluating individual works of art, but he used it as a guide into how he constructed the collection itself, right? How he hung the collection? It's very much both informed by and intended to demonstrate the The precepts of of the methodology so I chose Chose this gallery. This is one of my favorite ensembles of barns called these collections of Often seemingly disparate objects ensembles and So at the center of this ensemble was a picture by honor a dome a we can zoom in on it a little bit And so how would one approach this and I think this picture I chose this picture because I think it presents both up the opportunities as well as some of the challenges of the the method One of the places that most people want to start looking at a picture is is the subject What is pictured? What is what can I recognize from everyday life that's there and we get some of that here? Right, we get the sense of figures They're in some sort of space But beyond that it's really difficult to tell what's going on And that can be a limitation, right? We can sort of end there and say I have no idea what's happening and And leave it there the method gives us a An approach to go beyond that and so Barnes would ask first what strikes you about it and One of the first things one might Say about this is maybe not necessarily the color even though there is Important color there, but in the strong contrast between areas that are very strongly lit And those areas that are in deep shadow or at least are very deep colors So you have this very dramatic Contrast between the lit areas on the face and the chest and the arms of the the figures and the legs of the figures and Then these dark areas of their clothing their hair and then that sort of ominous Shape that's off to the to the left Then we could talk about the quality of the color itself So even though the palettes limited so we have reds we have dark blacks sort of Taupi colors There's hints of a kind of aqua blue and then there's this sort of silvery color that's in the in the background Even though those colors are fairly limited the colors have a sense of richness to them There's a depth to them the figures Aren't so much modeled with light and shadow even though there are other strong contrasts but the color seems to actually create the figures themselves as if the the color saturates them and makes them makes Makes their dimensionality And then the this the space of the of the picture It's sort of indeterminate held far back beyond the figures it goes And in fact it seems to rise up behind the figures almost like a like a wave and that Presents for a lot of people a sense of a kind of ominous quality to it So those are some of the the sort of obvious things that one one can say about and rooted in those qualities those formal qualities of color light line in space But beyond that as I said at the beginning the question is so what what does that add up to what's the what's the point of this? and a fairly quick Fairly quick time with this picture and as I said I use this picture a lot, so I'm drawing on my own experience with students and Just visitors looking at this People would say what I asked them what's going on even if they can't say what's happening What they can say is that these figures are doing something these figures are moving in some way They're moving forward and they seem to be moving forward in a kind of plotting Not fast, but in a kind of moderate speed But then they're also doing other things there seems to be some sort of swirling motion that seems to be Moving their their clothing and then they're looking back, and they're not just looking back, but one of the figures actually thrusts Their hand back so we have these very distinct qualities of moving of volumes moving forward of Something swirling of them swirling around and then this Thrust or movement backwards, and so just in really a very quick Period of time looking at this picture. We can tease out some what we would call expressive qualities those qualities that are Directly conveyed to us by the visual language that the artist is has chosen and displayed for us So if we have no place else to go these are some things that we can concretely say about this picture And every good would you like to expand or speak to your own experience? To comment to you know it sounds as bills describing it so beautifully it seems so so right and Yet what he's doing is he's actually taking on the entire history of art as a discipline and He has not mentioned The artist the title the date the school the country of origin how other people have thought of it He's starting with What we see and what we can share in that site so in that sense we have to understand that Barnes insistence on this method It put him at war with the entire art establishment And in fact maybe and Martha you could tell us if it's still true to this day But but the the method was like a line in the sand That this is where we begin and this is what matters And is that also I mean the next question I was going to be about the whether how this was a democratic approach and and about this being a sort of universal language I Don't know if bill you want to speak to that a rica The democratic nature of this approach in in Barnes's sense and and then perhaps today well democratic in the sense that that art is for everyone and That Barnes was going to make that possible by bypassing what I often call the priestly class of art historians and Gatekeepers who are the curators of the collections and Barnes was going to bypass all of this and therefore open The art to the people and give the art to the people in in that sense Did it give access to everyone no because not we all don't learn the same way and there were people who absolutely hated this approach and Who hated the installations and it kept them Out in the same way that a traditional museums labels and wall texts might Keep people out so to speak from from enjoyment from appreciation from love of the art but Barnes's spirit was that of opening the doors and I think if you have a chance if you didn't listen to the wonderful conversation on installation of the Barnes it gives you a sense that this whole ensemble Was about opening Access and democracy and fitting into the Dewey and idea that if we could become awake and Open in heart that we would not put up with injustice, but we would make the world better because we could imagine it otherwise Beautiful Bill I do have further perspectives on this idea of it being a democratic approach and Maybe how that's Well, I'll just ask has there been ways in which it has is Undemocratic in ways or does not acknowledge the whole person in ways that's coming into the museum or experiencing the museum in particular ways So I I'll take the first part first and maybe I'll avoid this So it's democratic because because it doesn't rely on any Outside knowledge right as Rick has suggested we don't need to know who the artist is We don't need to know the time period to me to be able to make the kinds of I think meaningful observations about the the painting As I described them. So in that way it opens art to anybody The the the method primarily draws on our own lived experiences We that's the the well of knowledge we need to be able to understand works of art. This is what Barnes believed So in that way, that's sort of the the democratic aspect of it Given that yeah, it leaves a lot out, of course, yeah, and as although I'll say it's not that Barnes Didn't understand or didn't understand the importance of the history of objects In the art and painting the book he published in 25 two-thirds of the book is given over to the traditions of art and then In-depth discussions of individual artists or their works in which he talks about the Some of to some degree the context in which works are created But it's not it's so I think of it as a kind of horse and cart He wanted the art to go first not the history And so I think it's interesting to me the leaving kind of the history of art context out seems a democratic approach in ways and I guess I'm wondering about The ways in which a viewer is invited or is not invited to bring their whole self or experience to it because we're you kind of are Was there a sense that knowledge interrupts the experience or what you're bringing Interrupts the experience and that you should kind of leave leave that behind which is in some ways a Contrast to the ways we think of viewing art today or the way that art is Encouraged in museums where the visitors is encouraged to bring theirs themselves and their identity politics or their gender there, you know, they're Various expressions of themselves to the artwork Yeah, I would say that's probably one of the initial hurdles that many Students have is well, what do I do with my own response? Right? I mean I I'm offended by this work or you know I love this work or whatever it might be And that that is that remains attention for sure What we try to do is We try to explain that those responses are valid but But they're subjective and so while they're important to you if we're thinking about this as a kind of communal Conversation around a work of art. What would be more important is if we're more Effective is if we're able to take those responses and describe There what's at the core of them? Is there something and a Response that's objective about it that then I can see why you respond that way And I say that recognizing that that also is very limiting. It's not that it It's it's not intended to delegitimize subjective responses, but recognize that they're limiting and that they're for the most part Something we only that we feel ourselves What is objectivity? Rika also maybe you could speak to this question too And I think we were talking and you shared an anecdote about Renoir's nudes In the gallery, I believe but about yes the way that different people might experience art and different traditions now in teaching about art in Galleries and and in the discipline of history of art actually I am my I am in a discipline of history of art now Which is interesting because I have an anthropologist, but so I am I'm familiar with this but look at the the tropes So yeah, maybe you could speak a little bit to that Let me just begin with the with one of the virtues of the Barnes method, which is That it doesn't isn't for anything, but the art that in its highest Practice the Barnes method is always about the art and being able to see the art and not using art as some kind of utilitarian force for questioning society or questioning injustice or Getting better scores on your SATs or any of the other Rationals that are often used in museums to bring students in Art was understood as being a virtue in itself And I think that's one of the great gifts of the method is that it believes in that and is a proponent for that but with that said yes, we come with complex lived lives and Each of us brings a different life to look at a work of art and as Bill said before some people's responses I hate this or I love this and Our job in education in the museum is is to support people's experience in order to expand it and to fulfill it And so this ensemble for example, it would be very very hard If you had a strong Feminist art historical point of view to look at this and not be thinking about the male gaze and about the eroticism of the two Renoir mutes and To recap an earlier question bill whether or not that was the reason that Barnes bought them knowingly or unknowingly and and why are they here and how can we look at them in the year 2022 without Feeling that there's some something Not right about them and is the Barnes then a safe place to express that sentiment and Even opening up further our museum is good places for these difficult conversations that we always say that that they are So so so the method would be inflexible to changing social political Concerns and so if you're looking at that Renoir nude and you're only talking about the line and the form and the color and Putting the subject matter to the side Let's see. We just hold it on the Renoir right so if you're if you're if you're just looking at and I'll take from Bill's use of the method if we start with light and we start with shade and we move to line and we move to to to The space that's articulated in the background And we never once mentioned the fact that this is a woman who's in the act of bathing with this incredibly sensuous sensuous skin in this very provocative and eroticized pose We experience the tension of the subject and the method yeah Bill perhaps you could speak to ways that In your own teaching are in offerings at the barns. There are programs and ways of Don't want to say updating but complicating the original method With all the values of the original I Looted to this earlier than in your suggestion or your question rather to rica the rigidity of the method is recognized And when one reads Barnes and Demesia, it's often stated as if this is the One and only valuable way of talking about a work of art I'd like to think that one of the things that we do now is We position it as something that is not in in competition with other approaches art historical approaches or would have you But rather something that runs alongside and enhances those those approaches when one's talking about a visual art the ability to be able to articulate what one sees is Critical regardless of what other arguments you're making and I know of no other approach that is better able to clarify Visual information than this method and I say that not only from my experiences or from the experience of My colleagues but from my students they the most common Comment we get is that how it changes the way one sees and It's not that we're changing them how physically how people see right, but we're clarifying for them What they all have always seen they're able to maybe for the first time be able to put Descriptions and words to their visual Experiences and that is a It's a powerful thing Monique and I add to that that you know to to my first night of teaching at the barns some 15 years ago my students were just what Bill was saying they had completed a full year before in the traditions of the barns and So they were my first initiation into the method and the way they described it was with intense love that they had been welcome and welcomed into the barn week after week in the evening hours and the magic of the galleries and taught This method of attending If we go back to one of the ensembles That they have been taught this method of attending that the metalwork guided you to see the composition of the paintings and Each painting spoke to the ones next to it and then spoke to the entire wall if we can pull back a little bit, Aliyah Spoke to the entire wall is what was called a wall picture and This woman and her husband in my in my first class said We can hardly wait to get up in the morning and sit at the breakfast table And we see the circular shape of the coffee cup And we see the faint circle of the moon in the early morning sky And we see the light falling across the table and then we see the spoon that enters Aligned onto the table and then the shape of the table which is Square and suddenly our whole morning is Made beautiful by what we've learned at the barns and and so these students gave me the sense of extension Into life, which I had never Quite felt before in all my years of teaching at the Met until that point that The experience of art was inside the museum for me But what the barns method taught me through by students eyes was that the barns method Enriched the entire world around you and your inner life as well as the life that that you observed So I have one more question before opening it up and because of the the nature of this of this particular barns conversation I Wanted to ask and emphasize the role of the educator at the barns foundation and Rika you have speaking have spoken to this but How do you what is the role of the educator? How do you think? The educator should drive the conversation in art museums and Foundations, I hope this is for me, right Because my my epiphanic experience at the barns was that the barns was carrying the torch for the future because the barns insistence on it being an educational foundation in which in the in the time of barns up until 1951 the educators could ask for the artworks and The educators and bill was explaining this to me in great detail this afternoon that That barns and demesia did the ensemble installations in the galleries Which taught people then yes, and here's demesia's class for some 80 people with her charismatic teaching But that so that the ensembles were always there for the public and it's something we think about in education What happens when there's not a mediator? What happens when there's not a facilitator or a teacher? What does the public do in a museum such as the Frick without labels or a foundation such as the barn without labels and I think you've been addressing that through technology But barns created these ensembles so that you could find your way and you could learn to pay attention and You could learn to see But when you came for the classes as you can see here the educator could ask for the artworks to be brought out specifically for that program and I thought this is the way of the future because of Education is at the heart of the mission and the heart of our purpose We should be in this role in all institutions My story I went back to the mat and I tried And I was Associated directly with the Department of Drawings and drawings and prints and I Asked well, could I just have one little gallery and I'll just ask for one drawing or one print to be brought out And we'll have chairs set up the way I experienced at the barns Foundation well, that never happened, but when I went to the Frick I found out it was possible and If we can stay with this slide for a minute We had in the vault of the Frick these extraordinary Rembrandt prints My last class that I taught at the barns Barbara Buckley had brought out of the Frick vault. I mean, sorry the barns vault Japanese prints to look at in connection to impressionist paintings and to test that connection And by the way, my students were quite suspicious of that connection and they were very confident Practitioners of the method. They weren't going to buy the art historian story And that was an important lesson for me, too But when I got to the Frick and became head of education, I found I was able to bring these beautiful Rembrandt prints into the galleries in the evening and in a sense create my own barns at the Frick and so these students are having a Dewey in moment and experience their gasping. I think they were looking at the three crosses by Rembrandt and What you can't see on the wall behind them is the Magisterial self-portrait that the Frick owns of Rembrandt Anything you would like to add Yeah, I Describe my and my students will confirm this I describe my role as as a Sherpa That is that I can lead the way, but I can't do the work. So what I hope to do and Rika has so eloquently described just what I hope my students take away At least in part is that this method is not It's not restricted to this place, but rather it's an empowering Approach that is transferable. You take it wherever you go whether it's your breakfast table or it's the Frick or it's the Frick It's the Met or whatever it is It empowers the viewer to be able to for themselves make Determinations as to what they're seeing is it good is it bad? Why do I like it? Why don't I like it? At least start a conversation about you know about these incredible objects that people have spent, you know, humankind making So if I if I can do nothing else, but be able to lead them to be able to see that then I feel like I've accomplished something Hey, thank you So I think we have time for questions This is not a question, but a comment as one who's been Benefited from a number of bills classes What I can say is that he is excellent at pulling stuff out of you that you didn't know you knew or didn't know How to do and he keeps asking questions and what are you seeing and he doesn't give up at all Till you get to something, but I think that's also a wonderful Role that you play is is helping when you talked about empowering to help us Look further and further and further and to encourage us along the way Thank you I'll add that something I didn't know before we started talking was that Rika and I actually came to this pretty much from the same angle is that I Didn't come to this as an art historian I came to it as in a background in philosophy and so it was really doing that first attracted me the art as well, but and so I'm as much guided by Doing philosophy as I am by by Barnes Um, there's a question from online How did art educators help to make the method more accessible to students from varied educational backgrounds? Who may not have the language to even describe what they may observe? Well, I mean I think that The method isn't instantaneous the method is something you do have to learn and forgive me Barnes People who are immersed deeply in it, but it seems to me that the rudiments are the fundamentals of the method can be learned pretty quickly Is that absolute is that fair to say and and and I say that because I In my early days at the Metropolitan Museum, I participated in a program that was not too unlike the method It was called arts awareness and is it possible to pull up that slider? We Have we passed that point we passed the point In any event arts awareness was a program that posited that you could experience line color shape and form in all the arts and In a way similar to the Barnes it it sought to bypass the curators and the art historians of the museum by having students move a line Draw a line read a line in poetry and so you would learn the language But it took it took it took some time and then it kind of became a fluency being able to do this again, this is Analogy that I use it's it's like learning a language. It's like learning a new sport, right? You can watch Golf on TV your whole life and you go out on to the green suddenly you no idea what you're doing, right? But you have to so you have to practice you want to get good at it. You have to practice So I was reading on hyper allergic this morning that in Brussels now a therapist can write a prescription for going to museums It's a six month experiment, and I just wondered How that might be understood as therapy But also what Barnes would say or what you would say to the effectiveness of this training them loose in art museums as therapeutic And that actually was piloted in the UK where physicians can do the same thing well Think about the history right how ironic that Barnes is trained as a physician and then dedicates his life to teaching people how and not just that but he made his fortune with the with a product that cured blindness not cured blindness but prevented blindness and then he goes on to spend the rest of his life teaching people how to How to see? That's a pretty pretty profound thing the connection between art and medicine. I think is It's so close We have a medicine in the arts program here where we bring first-year medical students and residents here and the similarity between looking at a painting and describing what one sees the parallel between that and Diagnosing a patient is immediately apparent the conversation of listening to other viewers and listening to their point of view is Just the kind of skills that they'll use when they're doing rounds with you know with nurses and physicians and specialists so Yeah Barnes is interested in psychology read deeply and Freud in particular I I Love your your question and I just want to try to answer it from my own perspective because sort of what are the You know what ails our society these days Psychologically I think it's it's The sort of frenetic pace of it. It's the Divided attention, right? It's so many things that you're supposed to keep track of all the time And I think that like I would imagine if art were going to be therapeutic To me it would be because it's making you Slow down and look at something and pay attention to something for more than 20 seconds That's like and and there is a lot of work being done right now between in the about the kind of relationship between art and and well-being and I don't know for me. It's about that kind of attention as a form of I Don't know if it's therapy, but it's Palliative is that the right word? I So as as one of the instructors here and having been taught by Bill and coming to being an instructor from the priestly class of art historian I Wonder bill if you could talk a little bit about How we as a group of instructors are updating the method and why We've talked about how How important it is to update it so that we're not just parroting the past Wonder if you would talk about that. Yeah, it's essential the the worst crime That an artist could make in Barnes estimation was academicism is repetition is repeating the past or trying to Resuscitate the past and if all we did was to repeat what had but Barnes wrote or what Demesio wrote we would Be committing the same crime We our eyes are not the same eyes as the turn of the 20th century or the middle of the 20th century our Experiences afford us a different perspective And for the the method to be relevant it has to be able to adapt itself if it's Unadaptable to current times then it's useless But I think what we have found is that Its malleability allows it to continue to be relevant. I took the Barnes course 45 years ago. I Unfortunately missed Vailette Masia I was scared to come because I heard she was so strict and if you were one minute late You couldn't come in and I had an hour drive. I finally took it with mr. Siegel. He was my teacher, but I was wondering if you would repeat the five plastic elements I Just I used to have the books I don't know where they went over all those years, but they were so hard to read and so complicated I Don't know if I ever did read them cover to cover But I it always stuck in my mind about the plastic elements and I thought it might be helpful Apropos what I Rika said about Looking at the table and the cup and the lines and the color and the shapes Yeah, so the we call the plastic the plastic means color the primary plastic mean Light line in space and there's more to it than that But those are sort of the basic those sort of basic syntax of the paintings. I Have a question online for Rika What is your opinion of museum teaching using visual thinking strategies? Visual thinking strategies is a is another codified method that has arisen Came out of the Museum of Modern Art Perhaps Not Coincidentally by the same person Philip Yenowen who developed arts awareness at the Metropolitan Museum Attempting to again bypass the authoritarian voice of the curator and the art art historian and VTS if you don't know it is based on three questions What's going on here? What is it that you see that makes you say that and what more do you see? And practiced in its pure form. It's as rigid as the original Barnes method But as Bill said so well if we don't if we don't move with the times that we don't move into the future if we don't understand things are malleable then then then we die on our own sword and I know very few people now who practice VTS in its pure form And they call it VTS plus because it's more inclusive as to personal response. I would agree Sorry The VTS questions are what do you see? What is it? What is it that you see that makes you say that and what more do you see? I Think it was actually modified to what's going on in this picture. What is it that you see that? Makes you say that what else is going on in this picture. I think it transferred a little bit to the verbs Why you're discussing the malleability or the evolution or changes? I'm curious about I mean all of the language much of the language that's used is about visual arts. What do you see? Maybe what do you hear? What do you smell? But still it's basically visual and the elements are Largely visual and I'm curious how it is adapted for increasingly conceptual And you know work that's not on a wall. I'm thinking even about the Isaac Julian exhibition that was You know how much it always feels a little like cheating if you have to look at the caption in order to figure it out, but That's sort of true in the Whitney biennial very little of it is on the wall and even if it's on the wall I'm not seeing Everything that's there or even most of what's there. So I'd love to know how you adapt the elements and the method I would say there's There's a couple questions there The Sort of general one is Different art forms have different means, right? So it's it wouldn't be the same there wouldn't be the same means if we're talking about Sculpture where mass and volume and void are more important Or and the methods adaptable to lots of different things. So Landscape architecture you could do the same sort of thing But you would focus on or music right the same you could use the same approach But the means would be we diff would be different your question about the The works not being on a wall I Think barn the question barns would want us to ask is are they works of art at all? Or are they something else and there are lots of things that are called works of art that perhaps would fit better in another category or Perhaps aren't works of art at all. There's some more online How would the barns? Okay? I think you answered that sorry There's a comment in many museums We can learn a lot via observation art students paint the paintings in order to appreciate the artists our work Yet the barns is not allowed visitors to set up easels in in order to make study So I guess that's I don't know if you want to address that though Unfortunately the scale of our galleries don't really allow for for things like that and then I've heard that barns use music with his students to discuss the art is this true and can you discuss this a bit in Relationship to the method. Yeah, absolutely barns into me as you both you both used music. I use music for that matter so In fact, there's a whole sheet of correlations between works of art and pieces of music it would primarily be sort of general things like sort of thumping beat to the distribution of fruit on in a still life for instance or The flow of a line to a legato met melody My question is related to Adapting the barns method to more modern times or more modern modern artists So particularly artists of color more diverse artists that are now being showcased Hopefully more and more across the country in the world But doing so when they bring their identity their political identity gender language, etc. How do you I? Guess talk about that using the barns method or it sounds as though it's not really much Or much room for it, but particularly when the artist's intention Behind that work of art is so strong. How do you go about navigating that? I? Would say there's two things there right so there's there would be the visual analysis of the work itself and then there would be the Historical or the contemporary context in which it's commentated And it's not that those are in opposition to each other actually I would think that in many ways they complement each other right so an artist chooses a particular way of creating work in order to make a visual statement not only in What's being pictured, but how it's being pictured? I think we certainly saw that In 30 Americans we saw remarkable diversity of work Many of which addressed questions of race and equity But each each artist Articulating those those issues in a very particular and individual way and so the method is a way of Sort of probing what's different about them and what are the effects of them? But I certainly can we argue that art is political and And I've shared the anecdote but it's It's it's when I've taught in the galleries It's sometimes hard for students and that I'm teaching perhaps about African art Are predominantly black students that I'm teaching to approach the barns? Permanent the guard gallery Without well everyone comes through with their own lens seeing it through their own lens but without first seeing these are White bodies and so it takes a lot of work and work that might seem work that might seem I don't want to use the word aggressive but to undo that lens of Looking at this this work through their experience to kind of taking away You know the race or taking away the gender taking away some of the context of it. I think it is a Useful and productive Exercise it's also been really productive in terms of African art for people to use formal approaches So that you aren't going in thinking this is primitive art, but you're looking at it through line and Coloring what have you but I will just acknowledge that yes, it's It's an interesting challenge Can I say that that? Back to the idea of the barns method is Virtuous and what it aspires to and I think Martha you use the word utopian in a conversation recently But that the barns method was about unity and Finding the universal it was not about dissension and difference which is very much a preoccupation of our time now and so They shouldn't work in exclusion But they should work together to create a more complex and and beautiful engagement with a work of art But what is interesting is that barns was acknowledging at his time Socioeconomic politics and politics of exclusion and racism in Philadelphia and that what is what one of one of the many things that made him so remarkable So I always have found it, you know interesting and it's there I can see how they work together, but then in the The approach to looking at art you were to take away That lens which clearly he had because he's he's very and he was interested seemingly in social justice and african-american community in Philadelphia, so it is They're rich and productive and interesting and yeah, it's not that he I wouldn't know that I we can't speak for him I certainly can't but that he doesn't see that and wouldn't want a utopia where we don't see that there is economic differences or you know racism because he saw that but it just may be in the approach to art or That give us an opportunity to shed If we can some some of those ways in which we look Yes Sorry, we're at time You got me excited there in the end all right So I think we are at time. Thank you for indulging me Comments there. So thank you everybody for coming. That was a great conversation