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Aesthetics and Values Course Description

This seminar examines the vital role visual art plays in the social and cultural dialogue surrounding controversial issues. It investigates how artists have challenged or enforced authority by creating new aesthetics. It further explores how art is used to initiate, accelerate, or combat social change.

The heart of the course is the Aesthetics & Values Research and Exhibition Project. This annual project provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their resourcefulness and creativity through the research, curation, and organization of an on-campus exhibition of contemporary Miami artists. After forming committees (Exhibition, Fundraising, and Public Relations) and assuming personal tasks (designing a website, soliciting funds, preparing a press release, etc) students are responsible for coordinating all aspects of the exhibition, including selecting artists, securing funding, negotiating gallery space, working with university administration, and managing local media.

Individually, students enter into a close working relationship with their selected artists. Working in groups of two or three, students interview the artist in his/her studio and collaborate in the selection and installation of the works for the exhibition. Finally, students produce a thorough research paper on their chosen artist's life and work.

The course is also composed of lectures, readings, research papers, visual thinking projects, and visits to art institutions.

Class lectures cover a broad variety of eras, artists, and controversies, from Classical Roman art to Dada, from Peter Paul Rubens to Maya Lin, and from the Nazi Degenerate Art Exhibitions to the 1990's US Cultural Wars. Required texts for the course are not limited to art criticism, but rather include books that address broader issues discussed in class. These include, among others, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, Ann Marie Fleming's The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam , Harry G. Frankfurt's On Bullshit, and Richard Blanco's City of a Hundred Fires.

Students must write two research papers. These are the Content and Method Paper and The Art and Authority Paper. They must also complete and coordinate an exhibition of their own Box Portrait Projects and Film Projects.

A final but integral component of this course entails off-campus visits to arts institutions. Class excursions involve attending lectures, visiting exhibitions, and meeting artists. Specifically, the class visits the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Wolfsonian, Miami Art Museum, Rubell Family Collection, and Lowe Art Museum.

As described in the Honors curriculum, third year seminars are structured to " focus on the foundations of paradigms of 'western values' in terms of the authority and power relationships that surround them."