FAQ

DOCUMENTS 

What is Shimer College?

Why “Great Books, Great Art”?

What’s on the site?

What’s a Toolkit?

How do I find . . . ?

Why can’t I find . . . ?

How were the Toolkits written?

Where do the images on the site come from?

Can I use the images on this site?

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What is Shimer College?

Shimer College was founded in 1853 in Mount Carroll, Illinois by Frances Wood Shimer and Cinderella Gregory. The College admits students on the basis of their capabilities rather than their previous educational backgrounds. The school has maintained that mission over the last 154 years and two relocations within Illinois, the most recent to Chicago, where we are minutes from the city’s cultural and commercial center. Our new home in Chicago reflects our commitment to an academic program featuring an interdisciplinary core curriculum originally designed by Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago and grounded in the Great Books tradition.

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Why “Great Books, Great Art?”

This site represents a culminating stage in a multi-year project Shimer College under the rubric of “Great Books, Great Art: Integrating Art History into the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum.” One greater aim of the project has been to further develop the Hutchins Plan of study in the Great Books by enriching our study of the “best of what has been thought and said” with a similar attention to the best of what human beings have made.

Funded through a curriculum development grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from 2005 through 2007, the project has involved:

three intensive summer working sessions for Shimer faculty with “Visiting Scholars” in the history of art: James Elkins, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies and of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Paul Barolsky, Commonwealth Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia; and Elizabeth Helsinger, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of English and Art History at the University of Chicago;  

periodic in-house seminars on the history and practice of art among Shimer faculty;

careful experimentation with  images, texts and practical exercises in the visual arts in Shimer core courses and elective offerings, as well as extra-mural activities devoted to increasing the role of the visual arts in a Shimer education;

the creation and ongoing maintenance of this website by Shimer faculty members;

and a comprehensive external evaluation of the entire project, including Shimer College’s commitment to curricular review and revision, by J. Scott Lee, Executive Director of the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) and the ACTC Liberal Arts Institute at the University of Dallas.

For .pdf files of the original grant proposal for “Great Books, Great Art: Integrating Art History into the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum” and detailed records of the foregoing activities, please see the “Documents” page linked to at the top of this page.

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What’s on the site?

This site does not intend to provide a comprehensive survey of the history of art. Rather, its main components are the Toolkits: focused, in-depth explorations of one or two major works of art and related issues in the humanities and social and natural sciences.

The site also contains:

Information on Shimer Courses, including the four semesters of each Area (Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences) and the three semesters of Integrative Studies courses, in Shimer’s Core Curriculum, as well as selected electives featuring visual materials and selected graduate-level courses in the Teaching Fellows Program of Shimer’s Hutchins Institute. Links to Toolkits related to individual Shimer courses can be found at the end of each course description.

A Glossary/Sources page related to issues raised in our Toolkits, particularly to provide definitions of technical terms for non-specialists in the visual arts.

A Documents page with of notes detailing the activities leading up to the creation of this site (see “Why Great Books, Great Art?” above).

A Listserv-Newsletter page intended to gather feedback and disseminate updated information on and about the site and Shimer College’s continuing work in integrating visual arts into the classroom.

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What’s a Toolkit?

Each Toolkit features a work of art, and sometimes more than one. Many (though not all) Toolkits also feature texts taught in Shimer College’s Great Books curriculum. Thus, each Toolkit provides information “About the Artist” and “About the Artwork”; some include information “About the Author” and “About the Text” as well. A short list of “Related Books and References” also accompanies this information on a Toolkit page.

As the name implies, a Toolkit’s chief feature is the “Tools,” listed near the bottom of each page. Each Tool is linked to open in a separate browser page. A Tool focuses on a topic for discussion and/or for a practical classroom activity related to different issues raised by the artwork and/or texts featured in the Toolkit. Each Tool is written to help non-specialists facilitate classroom discussions and practical, hands-on activities that encourage an interdisciplinary approach to great art as well as great books. 

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How do I find . . . ?

There are a number of ways to search for the site’s content:

The Search form on the Home page allows you to search for any and all Toolkits related to a given Keyword. Such terms may include, for example, artists’ or authors’ names, titles of artworks or texts, historical periods, geographic areas, or terms pertaining to the history and practice of visual arts (e.g. “perspective,” “abstraction,” “illustration,” “fresco,” and the like).

Further, below the Search form is a list of links to separate Browse Topic pages that allow you to scroll through the entire set of Toolkits on the site under various major headings.

The “Artist/Author” and “Artwork/Book Title” pages list all Toolkits alphabetically under the most commonly used name for any of these items (with major variants on names and titles listed parenthetically).

The “Toolkit Topic” page lists key issues in the visual and liberal arts above links to Toolkits that focus on those topics (e.g. Perspective, Gesture, Color, Narrative, Space, Motion).

The “Medium” page lists material forms and practices that characterize the artwork focused on in a given Toolkit (e.g. Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Print).

The “Genre” page lists the categories of visual and textual composition that characterize the works in a given Toolkit (Illustration, Bible Story, Portrait, Landscape).

The “Period/Date” page gives a chronological listing of the visual and textual works focused on in the Toolkits, ordered under major periods as well as by their dates of creation (e.g. Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern).

Additionally, at the bottom of each Toolkit page, you will find a list of links to Related Toolkits.

Finally, again, the Shimer Courses page provides links to Toolkits related to individual Core courses, elective and Teaching Fellows Programs.

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Why can’t I find . . . ?

Please note that the site does not intend to offer an exhaustive survey of art and its history. We do, however, update the site regularly, and intend to make as broad and inclusive a representation of artists and artworks as we can while maintaining our focused, intensive approach. If you cannot find a given artist or artwork (or author, book, genre, medium, period), it likely means that we have not yet written a Toolkit about them or it yet. Please feel free to suggest new Toolkits to us for inclusion.

Also, again note that we have listed our artists and works under their most commonly used names, so you may be trying to find something under a variant. Please try more than once to find what you are looking for - it may be there under a slightly different name!

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How were the Toolkits written?

Unless otherwise indicated, all the materials on the site are written, designed and maintained under the direction of Shimer College faculty members. Our faculty has expertise in a wide range of academic disciplines. Thus, while much of what appears in the Toolkits is informed by art historical scholarship, we have taken and want to support a generalist approach to the materials we present. We aim for accuracy in our information and relevance in our interpretive stances. The Shimer faculty takes full responsibility for the site’s design and content; none of our Visiting Scholars or our External Evaluator have been directly involved in the production of this site. At the same time, we appreciate their guidance in charting the complex, rich terrain of the history of visual art.

All the Toolkits have been or will be tested in our classroom discussions, and revised accordingly. Also, we invite impressions and critiques from outside visitors intended to help us make the site more useful and usable to others and ourselves. Textual and web-based materials used in writing a given Toolkit are listed in the Toolkit’s “Related Books and References” section. Also, the Glossary page includes a list of all these cited Sources, as well as other general Sources used in creating the site.

Where do the images on the site come from?

The images on this site have come from a number of sources. Of artworks in the public domain, we have produced images ourselves, and have borrowed others from sites similarly developed to increase public access to and knowledge of great works of art. In this regard, we would like to thank especially Mark Harden of Artchive (at www.artchive.com) and Dr. Emil Krén of the Web Gallery of Art (at www.wga.hu) for their generous permission to use works from their sites. Clearing rights have been obtained for images protected by copyright. All acknowledgments for images appear in each Toolkit's "Related Books and References" section.

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Can I use the images on this site?

Please contact s.patterson@shimer.edu regarding the use of images on this site.

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