By Carmen Martinez ’20 News Reporter
AP Art History has made its way back into this year’s academic offerings. Its resurgence is due in large part to the level of student interest. Some pushed hard for the class to run while they had the chance to take it. All that was needed in order for that to happen was enough interested students to fill a section. Enough people expressed their desire to join the class last year, so when the news broke out that AP Art History would finally run after a two-year hiatus, students were thrilled.
Taught in the Irvine Lecture Hall, the class enrolls nineteen students, with two-thirds being seniors and the other third being upper middlers. The material, focusing primarily on art and architecture from around the globe, spans from 3000 BCE to the 21 century. The study of art history is very nuanced, focusing not only on different time periods but also different movements in art.
AP Art History teacher, said Wells Gray, “I do not teach in a traditional Art History classroom composed of lecturing on readings about works of art. Students are responsible for the material to teach each other through various solo and group activities and projects in and out of the classroom.”
“I really enjoy teaching Medieval Art because of the rawness of
the art, as well as Surrealism because of the visual paradoxes the works
of art offer the viewer,” added Gray.
Many eleventh graders were concerned that they might not be able to enroll because their schedules might not have been flexible enough. Traditionally, eleventh graders fulfill their US History requirement during their upper middler year, and it was difficult to gauge how much that would affect student enrollment.
However, the schedule proved to be adaptable to student interest, at least in this case. Some students in the class have chosen to postpone their US history requirement until their senior year and replace it with AP Art History. For the students faced with the choice, it was an easy decision to make and one they remain pleased with.
From a student perspective, the class is quite successful, because there is a good balance between challenging and interesting. Megan McGregor ’20 said, “I really enjoy it so far. I think my favorite thing that I’ve learned from Mr. Gray is about Dada, which is a style that came in the early-to 20th century. If you go to a modern art museum and see a shovel hanging from a ceiling or a bicycle wheel on a stool, that is what Dada is. Before taking this course, I didn’t understand how that was considered art, but after hearing the ways in which it is, it completely shifted my understanding of the style. It has just been so fascinating.”
Asked why studying art history is relevant and why students should take the course, McGregor . “There’s so much more than just the aesthetic that lies beyond the image that you see. I think it can be really special when a person has the ability not only to appreciate art but to understand all of its layers and complexity.”