<p> This study is an overview of how museums utilize informal learning as a primary source of engagement to improve overall visitor experience while building community interest. For this study, it was important to look at the history and purpose of museums origin and the evolution of their function from an art institution to an educational institution. The top 3 Los Angeles based museums; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty and the Museum of Contemporary Art were all put under the various scopes to deduce if they are utilizing their education department to be the best of their ability to create meaningful experiences for their visitors. They were evaluated based on their use of technology, use of dialogue and the overall experience within the museum. Lastly, this study stresses the importance of public art to incorporate all three areas of informal learning.</p>

One of the most obtrusive features of Yoruba studies has been its clear pattern of regional preferences and biases in its scholarship. This pattern is reflected in the present concentration of studies on the southwest, the northwest, the central subgroups of Ife, Owo, Ijesha, Egba, Ijebu, Oyo, and Ilorin on one hand, and the paucity of works on the northeast and southeast subgroups of the O-okun Yoruba, the Igbomina, the Ikale and the Ilaje on the other. There is no other subgroup where this particularistic trend in Yoruba studies and especially, art historiography can better be observed than with the scholarly neglect of the O-okun peoples, the most northeasterly of the Yoruba subgroups. An important goal of this thesis is to foreground the multi-culturalistic tendencies among the Yoruba and underscore the necessity to provide comparable scholarly attention to neglected subgroups, the O-okun peoples in particular.

This dissertation is a study of the late Moche murals found within the adobe temples of Pañamarca, Peru (ca. 600-850 CE). This project was designed to redress the problem of iconographic decontextualization of the Pañamarca paintings that, through limited documentation and repetitive scholarly publication, had become effectively untethered from their material moorings and spatial settings. New fieldwork succeeded in contextualizing and conserving remains of all known mural paintings. This field research also resulted in the discovery of a new corpus of paintings at the site. Together these paintings form a case study on image making and visual experience in a Pre-Columbian era without contemporaneous writing. This art historical study of archaeological monuments makes several contextual moves. Most concretely it mounts evidence for the situated experiences of images by ancient beholders. This includes analysis of spatial patterns that governed both visual and kinaesthetic approaches to images, as well as forensic indices of human-image engagement and response through time. The approach is not, however, exhausted by the nested contexts of architecture, archaeology, and geography. Meaning is further established through the discernment of philosophical propositions set forth in the broader corpus of ancient Moche art, material culture, and ritual practice. This work proposes to yield emic perspectives on mimesis, corporeality, and spatiality. An embodied approach to image and space is not merely imported from theory developed elsewhere, but is grounded in the Andean cultural setting at hand. The orthodox Moche imagery of the Pañamarca murals was arrayed in specific, strategic ways in both plazas and private spaces. In some areas life-size paintings may have modeled mimetic performance that perpetually enlivened ritual architecture. Elsewhere densely composed imagery would have enveloped the bodies of ritual practitioners and devotees, as they were absorbed into a private architectural repository of specialized knowledge. This is unusual in the Moche world where the innermost spaces of lavishly decorated temple complexes are themselves usually devoid of painted images. The paintings of Pañamarca are interpreted as efficacious in the articulation, embodiment, and recollection of late Moche ideology and identity as it crystallized on the southern periphery in the Nepeña Valley. / History of Art and Architecture

<p> For centuries Western sensibilities have been governed by an assumption that imagination is an exclusively human faculty, independent of the phenomenal world. This dissertation explores a view, long elaborated in mythologies and artistic traditions of pre-modern cultures, that phenomenal reality is the template of imagination, that terrestrial and celestial elemental forces are continuous with the mind, and that meaning in artistic practice is derived from a reciprocal exchange with the world in which we live.</p><p> This dissertation revives a traditional view of the heart as the seat of a continuous circulation of mind, imagination, and the world. In endeavoring to recover the eclipsed intelligence of the heart, this study argues that both the thought and perception of the heart are primarily metaphorical, which necessarily makes them essential in humanity&rsquo;s unceasing exchange with the greater community of beings.</p><p> This dissertation demonstrates that imagination and artistic practice are inseparable from the environment, and that a study of pre-modern artistic traditions broadens an ecological understanding of the web of relationships between living beings and the environment that sustains them. Three traditions of painting disclose varying human orientations within the world: Navajo sandpainting, Chinese landscape painting, and Western European painting since the fourteenth century. Navajo sandpaintings are made at times when disorder and sickness prevail in order to restore balance in the relationship between the human community and primordial forces embodied in the landscape. Chinese landscape painting is a visual contemplation of the interwoven place of humanity within the perpetual change and transformation of heaven, earth, and sentient beings. Western painters in the fourteenth century departed from pre-modern approaches to painting when linear perspective was introduced as a way to fix a perception of the phenomenal world that was primarily optical, rather than visionary. The perception promoted by this method, based on an orientation that is both dualistic and literal, eventually ran its course, giving way to the introduction of more interactive approaches to artistic practice and perception by twenty-first century artists.</p>

Since beginning my graduate studies in landscape architecture, I have encountered many situations in class in which references to art were used. I discovered a connection in the usage of the jargon of art in landscape architecture study. People, for the most part, do not know what landscape architects do or who we are. In this thesis I will make the case for aligning the profession of landscape architecture with the fine arts and humanities. An art history component in the curriculum and education and training of landscape architects would augment their design and presentation skills in the workplace. I have included the results of a survey questionnaire that I sent to 65 landscape architecture teaching faculty representing 38 landscape architecture programs in the United States. These individuals held either a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, a Master of Fine Arts degree, or they had a scholarly research interest in art.

In this dissertation I explore the relationship between the city and the pastoral ideal in America. While not meant to be a comprehensive discussion of Urban Pastoralism, I want to focus my attention on the pastoral impulse one experiences within the city. Some versions of American Pastoralism emphasize the city as a complex wilderness, which creates within its inhabitants a pastoral impulse for a simpler mode (Golden Age) outside the boundaries of the city. However, the inability of the subject in art, literature, and film, to escape from the city forces the subject to seek a symbolic pastoral moment within the city. I will discuss three "texts" to demonstrate how this pastoral desire is manifested in the city. First I will discuss a selection of paintings by Edward Hopper. Hopper paints an ironic form of hortus conclusus in his paintings of this city, for his inhabitants appear trapped within the frame of the painting and longing for "something beyond the frame." I will demonstrate how Hopper's paintings present the possibility of a narrative through this irony. As viewers, our desire to impose order upon this chaos compels us to construct narratives for his paintings. This narrative desire is tied to the pastoral impulse which satisfies our need for order. Second, I will discuss John Updike's Rabbit, Run in which Harry pursues a point suspended in time. His pursuit of the Golden Age of his youth is compromised by the physical and geographical surroundings. Finally, Woody Allen's Manhattan shows a man in pursuit of the pastoral in terms of the meaning and purpose of art. Through his search for artistic integrity, Allen discovers the value of beauty as a symbol of the pastoral ideal.

This study investigates changes in ceramics at Tell Leilan, Syria, during three consecutive periods between 2500 and 2200 B.C. These changes co-occur with significant socio-political changes: urbanization of the region and fledgling statehood. The approach developed to examine ceramic change in this work is Ceramic Technical Sequence Analysis (CTSA) which combines the strategies of ceramic ecology, the French technique et culture school, and behavioral archaeology. CTSA is also informed by practice theory; thus, the limitations of previous work in ceramic technology are reduced. This technologically-based work discloses that the ceramic change noted at Leilan is the result of intensified ceramic production, notably faster manufacturing techniques. Estimates of labor costs were attempted through proxy measures of time expended in procuring and processing raw materials, and in pottery production techniques, including vessel formation, decoration and firing. Investigations are ordered according to the chaine operatoires used in ceramic manufacture at Leilan, and each aspect of the chaine operatoire is specifically examined in regard to changes in time expended during manufacture activities. Though archaeologists often inform their research with scientific techniques, this project is atypical in the number of methods applied, as well as the additional information gleaned from interviews with contemporary artisan-craft potters (N > 40). Investigation of multiple lines of evidence, rather than reliance on a single technique, strengthen this study's conclusions. Data were derived from a variety of characterization techniques used in Materials Science and Geosciences. Neutron activation analysis (INAA), systematic refiring tests, examination of petrographic thin sections, strength testing, dilatometry studies (thermal expansion), xeroradiography, observation of and consultation with modern potters and macroscopic examination of artifacts, were used to observe changes in ceramic production between the three stratigraphically delineated temporal phases at Tell Leilan. Not every aspect of chaine operatoire informs equally, nor agrees, on the topic of time expenditure. Vessel forming techniques deduced through "pot reading" of manufacture marks left on vessel surfaces proved to be the most fruitful. Ceramic Technical Sequence Analysis is productive in investigation of ceramic change, and when guided by larger research questions, may provide a link between ceramic- and social change.

Venetian glass, especially that of the Renaissance, has been admired for centuries due to its quality workmanship and overall visual appeal. In addition, a certain mystique surrounds the glassmakers of Venice and their products. This dissertation research undertakes a comprehensive view of the culture and technology of Renaissance Venetian glass and glassmaking. Particular attention is paid to luxury vessel glass, especially those made of the "colorless" material typically referred to as cristallo. This segment of the industry is seen as the primary locus of substantial technological change. The primary question examined in this work is the nature of this technological change, specifically that observed in the Renaissance Venetian glass industry circa 1450-1550. After providing an appropriate social and economic context, a discussion of Venice's glass industry in the pre-Renaissance is given. Industry and guild trends and conditions which would be influential in later centuries are identified. In addition, the sudden expansion of Venice's glass production in the mid-15th century is described as a self-catalyzed phenomenon in response to prevailing cultural and economic conditions. Demand is identified as a necessary precursor to the production of luxury glass. Building on this concept, activities and behaviors relevant to demand, production, and distribution of Venetian glass are examined in depth. The interaction between the Renaissance consumer and producer is treated along with the position of Venice's glass industry in the overall culture and economy of the city. It is concluded that the technological changes observed in Venice's Renaissance luxury glass industry arose primarily out of perceived consumer demand. Social and economic circumstances particular to Renaissance Italy created an environment in which a technological development such as cristallo glass could take place. The success of the industry in the 15th and 16th centuries can be found in the fruitful interplay between consumers and producers, the manner in which the industry was organized, coupled with the skill of the Venetian glassmakers to make and work new glass compositions into a variety of desired objects.

Botticelli's Portrait of a Lady (Smeralda Brandini ) (c. 1471) is representative of a largely uninvestigated tendency in Italian Renaissance portraiture to depict female sitters without sumptuous clothing, jewelry, and heraldic devices. Traditionally, these visual cues had been used to construct the elevated social identity of portrait sitters. This study scrutinizes a work within a neglected portion of Botticelli's oeuvre, examining the ways in which its modest, and somewhat ambiguous, visual cues also construct its sitter's elevated social identity, while simultaneously protecting it. This analysis seriously considers a portrait of a woman who is not famous, nor an idealized beauty, nor an allegorical figure. It explores her image, its functions, and its multiple layers of meaning within the confines of late-fifteenth century social relationships, gender roles, and the original domestic viewing context of Renaissance portraits (considering their public display, as well as their relationship to Marian imagery, within the home).

<p> Joaqu&iacute;n Sorolla (1863-1923) painted numerous works of children bathing and playing on Spain's Mediterranean shores. This life-affirming subject allowed Sorolla to participate in the broad cultural discourse in Spain concerning cultural regeneration. Sorolla's work with the subject of the child bather intensified in the decade following the Crisis of 1898. <i>Sad Inheritance! </i>, his first monumental work on a child bather subject, directly engages the Theory of Degeneration, and the degeneration of Spain itself. While creating this work, Sorolla also developed paintings of child bathers that moved decisively toward a vision of regeneration. It was this regenerative vision that the artist would pursue in a number of complex and shifting ways, until creating a series of large child bather paintings in 1909. This thesis takes an episodic approach, studying key works from a decade of Sorolla' s output. </p>