Interpreting Art: Tools for Critiquing, Creating and Curating (VMS-0020)

Spring 2025 · VMS 0020 · Tufts University · 3 credits · Undergraduate

“I’m just interested in exploring the apparatus I’m being threaded through, you know?” Robert Smithson, 1972 This class follows Smithson in exploring the ‘apparatus’ of art criticism: the theories, philosophies and critical approaches that have been applied to art's examination in the past 50 years. Together, we will consider the changing ways in which it has been defined, artists evaluated, and their work given historical context during a period in which the art world has undergone dramatic change. By examining comparative case histories of both historical and contemporary art makers and critical writers, the course will address such issues as the origins of taste, formalist vs. socio-cultural approaches, the role of gender, race, sexuality, class and intersectionality in making and critiquing, and challenges to capitalism, commodity culture, and institutional authority. Students will learn the terms relevant to understanding psychoanalytic, semiotic, post-colonial and ecocritical theories. Throughout the class, participants will read contemporary criticism and develop their own analytical voice.

Course codes: VMS-0020, VMS 0020, VMS0020, VMS-20, VMS 20, VMS20

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