VTS

The readings for today centered on Visual Thinking Strategies.  I'm not going to repeat the theory here. Enough to say that it is designed to emphasize looking, thinking and communicating.  Used strictly, which we won't do at the Walters, it would not teach much about art at all.  Used sparingly, I could see it being a great technique to get a discussion going.   It would work best with narrative works of art.  Using this theory, the docent would ask only three questions:  What's happening in this picture?  What do you see that makes you say that?  What else is happening in this picture?

After a spirited discussion of the technique, we proceeded to sit in front of Scipio Africanus and use the technique for nearly an hour.  There were tons of different ideas of what's going on in this picture.

The frustration in the technique is that the student would never actually learn what the picture is about, according to the artist, or who the artist is.  This technique is precisely the opposite of what I usually do in museums.  I would be using the history to tell the story, thinking that the elements of the story make the painting more interesting.  I have to think about how to combine my instincts with all this new stuff I'm learning.

An aside:  this picture is by Tiepolo, and there is another large Tiepolo at the top of the stairs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  You can't miss it going up the stairs to the painting galleries.  I was immediately struck by the similarities in the two pictures.

In the afternoon we each gave our first talks, describing a work in the Ancient Art galleries.  It was easy and I enjoyed it.  Here's the piece I described:

Gods Bearing Gifts

I refrained from using art terms per the instructions for the exercise.  I didn't even give the name of the piece because it gave too much away.  I noticed that the other docents-in-training did not always follow that instruction.  Sometimes it was good to get more information, but sometimes it was really annoying because it took away from my own looking at the piece.


I'm not going to list the objects that the others chose, but it was fascinating to hear the descriptions and get a sense of different personal styles.  Most worked really well.  It seems that there are probably a lot of ways to get this right.