About this Travel Course
Course Description
This course offers an insider’s look at past and current mechanisms of selling, buying, and exhibiting art. The goal is for artists and designers at RISD to understand the aftermath of art-making, something that they will eventually engage with once they become professionals. Through the example of an iconic location, the city of Paris, we will examine issues such as: What is at stake when art is displayed for sale? How does it get a price value in the first place and who decides? What gets auctioned, how and why? We will also discuss ethics and how licit or illicit artifacts on display in public and private museums may be. To do this, we will replace art collecting in its historical and social contexts and explore the part of colonialism in the formation of collections in the West, as exemplified by the Parisian situation. Consequently, we will tackle the topic of the present-day trend for restitutions. How critical of the art market can we be as we experience it in the flesh? What kind of resistance exists to decolonizing the art market in Paris? From the classroom to the Louvre to the art dealer shop to the auction house to street art, this is a journey into the history of art display and transactions.
We will avail ourselves of a classroom at the International Studies in History and Business of Art & Culture (IESA), a private upper-education school that trains future art agents. Art history classes will prepare visits to museums and monuments but they will also offer space for discussion and criticism. Most of the teaching time will, nevertheless, take place on-site, touring public and private locations that display art (for sale or not). We will visit and interview art dealers, gallerists, curators, auctioneers, and scholars. At the IESA gallery, you will have the opportunity of exhibiting your own homework as a conclusion of your Parisian stay.
Learning Outcomes + Assignments
- Increase awareness of the world of art sales at a practical level in order to reflect on one’s own artistic production and its future transactions
- Museology: understand the significance of display and how it creates a further layer of meaning
- Art history: gain knowledge in the history of collections, taste, special architecture for them; understand the part of colonialism and the Western appropriation of colonial artifacts; be cognizant of the debate on restitutions
- Communication: develop the ability to devise informed interviews, ask relevant questions, and raise thorny issues without embarrassing your interlocutor
- Creating a collective exhibition; communicating with an audience
Housing
To participate in RISD Global Summer Studios, all students are required to stay in RISD- provided housing for the duration of the course. Students will be accommodated in single occupancy rooms with bathrooms and a kitchenette available in each room.