ARTH 28
Beyond Looking: Experiencing Multisensory Art
Last Offered n/a

This course is not offered in the current catalog

When we think about art, usually we think about painting or sculpture, but there is a whole world of art-making and experience that also engages listening, touching, smell, and even taste. In this course we will examine a range of modern and contemporary artists who create immersive or multisensorial works, or art projects that require audience participation. In addition, we will think together about artworks that are conventionally visual to understand how even more traditional works can communication and open up multisensorial possibilities for the viewer. This course emphasizes being in museum spaces and spending time with works of art at Williams and other local museums. Students will also have an opportunity to be in conversation with other specialists from these institutions, to learn first-hand about topics like cutting-edge approaches to curating multimedia art for diverse audiences or using digital storytelling to make museum collections more accessible. Artists discussed range from billboards by Korean-American Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim to Jacolby Satterwhite’s immersive installations that engage queer theory; Wolfgang Laib’s pollen “sculptures”; James Turrell’s sensory immersion installations of light and space; Ernesto Neto aromatic hanging sculptures; and participatory works by Rirkrit Tiravaniha, Carsten Höller and EJ Hill, to name just a few, as well as Jeffrey Gibson’s installation and performance series on view at MASS MoCA winter 2025.