The Art Museum Insider: Learn to Understand and Interpret Art

Hi everybody! I know it has been almost two months since I wrote a post, and I’m very sorry about that. But I have been hard at work on something else that I think everyone will really enjoy – an updated and expanded version of The Art Museum Insider with plenty of additional exercises, new examples in almost every chapter, and an expanded section about how to interpret art.

The Art Museum Insider

As you may remember, The Art Museum Insider is designed to help everyone better understand art and feel confident in their interactions with it. I first developed it a few years ago to help the many people who tell me they feel lost, perplexed, and even insecure when they visit art museums. While I totally understand why art can seem really opaque to people, I really don’t think like it needs to be this way. It’s just that unfortunately, the industry doesn’t do a great job of making art appreciation accessible to newcomers. I hope that this handbook can help address that.

Although The Art Museum Insider started out as an online course, it is now an 88-page pdf handbook. This is partly in response to requests to make this content downloadable but also because I wanted a smoother experience than what my online learning platform was providing. In the process of turning the course into a book, I had the opportunity to make some changes, and I’m really pleased with how well they enhance the existing material.

How The Art Museum Insider can help you understand art

The Art Museum Insider isn’t an art history program; it’s more of a how-to understand art program. Rather than teaching you about specific artists, artworks, and styles, the handbook introduces you to the key ideas that form the basis for all artworks and provides ways of interpreting art for yourself. As a result, it gives you the skills and information you need to appreciate pretty much any kind of art you want. You won’t become an expert this way, but you will become a more independent and confident art lover rather than one who has to rely on other people to explain the art they see. And you can do it without years of study, tons of memorization, or a degree in art history.

Here is some of what you’ll learn about art

How art is put together

First, you’ll understand the visual components within artworks, the choices artists make in using them, and the effects they can create. For example, you’ll discover the expressive powers of color and line, the impact of composition on your viewing experience, and the wildly different approaches artists can take in depicting the same exact subject. As a result, you’ll start to see how artworks are the products of visual choices, interactions, and effects that you can interpret without specific knowledge about the artist or style. Learning this means that you can intelligently appreciate art even when you don’t have any information about it.

Art’s many meanings

Art can contain a surprising variety of meanings, and they go far beyond obvious ones like telling stories and recording appearances. You’ll discover a multitude of ways that art (both representational and abstract) can convey meaning, as well as some of the techniques art historians use in interpreting them. We’ll consider some of the many ways to reasonably interpret the same artwork, ponder how art objects can send powerful messages about their owners and subjects, and practice applying what you already know to consider an artwork in its historical and cultural context. With this, a broad new world of fascinating art interpretation possibilities will open up for you to explore.

Think like an art historian

What really sets The Art Museum Insider apart from other online offerings is the fact that it teaches you to analyze art using methods similar to those art historians use. Even without formal training in the field, these techniques will allow you to extract maximum information from visual imagery, consider art from multiple perspectives, connect what you see to what you already know, and more. Familiarity with these approaches will allow you to form your own conclusions about rather than relying exclusively on explanations provided by others.

Skills for art museums and life

You’ll also practice skills, like describing what you see, comparing images, and interpreting based on visual evidence, that are useful in both art appreciation and everyday life. Staples of the academic art history classroom, these skills aren’t frequently taught outside it, so independent learners may not have had the chance to acquire them before. These skills will enhance your visual literacy (the ability to look closely and think critically about visual images), so they’ll help you have a more meaningful relationship to everything from paintings to social media posts to interior decor.

Interpret for yourself

The handbook is filled with prompts, activities, exercises, and questions to help you connect with and interpret art during your museum visit. They’re fun and effective because they encourage you to pair your natural curiosity and intellect with what you’ve learned throughout the book. At its core, interpreting art simply means thinking deeply about art and deriving something meaningful from the experience, and these prompts are specifically designed to guide you in doing so. Each one encourages you to think about specific aspects of your art-viewing experience, so feel free to pick and choose the approaches that work best for you in any situation.

Who It’s For

The Art Museum Insider is designed for anyone who wants to have more confident, satisfying, meaningful encounters with art and art museums, even without any prior experience. If you already have some familiarity with art, as I suspect most of my readers do, you’ll benefit from an intentional and systematic approach not generally available to independent learners. Thus, if your art appreciation education has been primarily self-driven, you’ll likely discover plenty of concepts and ways of thinking that are new to you. If you’re a complete beginner, you’ll discover a system that allows you to begin understanding art through your own observation and intellect without years of study.

Either way, let The Art Museum Insider guide you to become the confident, independent, and empowered art viewer I believe all of us were meant to be. With the release of this updated and expanded version in convenient pdf format, now is a great time to join in if you haven’t already.

Get your copy today! Click here or on the banner below.

Become an empowered art viewer  -The Art Museum Insider


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Welcome

The mission of A Scholarly Skater Art History is to make historical art and architecture accessible to everyone.
I’m Alexandra, an art historian who believes that looking at art can enrich everyone’s life. Welcome to my website!
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An important note

Art history is an inherently subjective field, and my perspective isn’t the only one. I encourage all my readers to seek out differing opinions and read multiple sources to get a broader and more complete view of this complex and fascinating field of study. Read my disclaimers for more information.

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