Stanford University

Learning Guides

Special object narratives for use with Stanford coursework and research

Recasting Rodin

Patrick R. Crowley, PhD
Associate Curator of European Art

 

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Object Narrative | Recasting Rodin

Artists & Anatomists

Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell, PhD
Burton and Deedee McMurtry Curator, and Director of the Curatorial Fellowship Program

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Object Narratives | Artists & Anatomists

Photography & Text

Maggie Dethloff, PhD
Assistant Curator of Photography and New Media
 

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Object Narratives | Photography & Text

Looking at Each Other: American Portraiture

Aleesa Alexander, PhD
Assistant Curator of American Art

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Titus Kaphar, U.S.A., b. 1976. Page 4 of Jefferson’s “Farm Book,”... 2018.

Devotion and Doubt in the Spanish World, 1500-1800

Kate Holohan, PhD
Assistant Curator of Academic Engagement

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Devotion and Doubt

David Smith's Timeless Clock

Jennifer Field, PhD
Executive Director of the David Smith Estate

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David Smith's Timeless Clock

Recasting Rodin

Single Object Videos

To learn more about Rodin’s lost wax casting method, which is still in use today, watch this short video from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation: Plaster, Molds, Wax and Fire (via YouTube).

Object Narratives | Recasting Rodin

Recasting Rodin

Patrick R. Crowley, PhD
Associate Curator of European Art

What makes Rodin’s sculpture so modern, it has been argued, is the way in which he makes visible an aesthetic of process—how, in other words, he takes traditional sculpture apart and puts it back together again in new and daring ways.

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Artists & Anatomists

Single Object Videos

Object Narratives | Artists & Anatomists

Artists & Anatomists

Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell, PhD
Burton and Deedee McMurtry Curator, and Director of the Curatorial Fellowship Program

After the sixteenth century, European artists gained knowledge of human anatomy studying live models and attending anatomical demonstrations held at academies and studios—or sought out work with medical men with access to corpses. Whether created to represent an empirical or imagined encounter, these representations of the body often reveal society’s conflicted feelings about anatomical study being research toward a greater good, or a perverse and sacrilegious violation.

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Photography & Text

Single Object Videos

Object Narratives | Photography & Text

Photography & Text

Maggie Dethloff, PhD
Assistant Curator of Photography and New Media

These photographs typify various relationships of photo and text. In some instances, the text and photo are side by side, and in others, they are together within the borders of the image. Of the latter, some feature “found text”—words and phrases that already existed in the environment—while others include text that was added to the photograph.

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Looking at Each Other: American Portraiture

Looking at Each Other: American Portraiture

Aleesa Alexander, PhD
Assistant Curator of American Art

 

Titus Kaphar, U.S.A., b. 1976. Page 4 of Jefferson’s “Farm Book,”... 2018.
Looking at Each Other: American Portraiture

Looking at Each Other: American Portraiture

Aleesa Alexander, PhD
Assistant Curator of American Art

Here, a selection of American portrait paintings from the Cantor’s collection demonstrate how American artists have worked within the genre, and how the genre itself has changed over time. These paintings allow us to ask questions like: what types of faces do we typically expect to see in a painted portrait, and what faces are rarely, if ever, represented? What can portraits tell us about social histories in the United States? How have contemporary artists expanded the possibilities of portraiture?

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Devotion and Doubt in the Spanish World, 1500-1800

Devotion and Doubt in the Spanish World, 1500-1800

Kate E. Holohan, PhD
Assistant Curator for Academic Engagement

 

Devotion and Doubt
Devotion and Doubt Learning Guide

Devotion and Doubt in the Spanish World, 1500-1800

Kate E. Holohan, PhD
Assistant Curator for Academic Engagement

In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, the diversity of religious beliefs and practices across the Spanish realms belied the Catholic church’s façade of impenetrable orthodoxy.
Difference and doubt were always present, always subversive, always a threat. At a time in which the visual was, for the largely illiterate masses, the primary means through which to experience the divine, the art and material culture of the early modern Spanish world testifies to these tensions and contradictions.

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David Smith's Timeless Clock

David Smith's Timeless Clock

Jennifer Field, PhD
Executive Director of the David Smith Estate

 

David Smith's Timeless Clock
Davd Smith's Timeless Clock Learning Guide cover

David Smith's Timeless Clock

Jennifer Field, PhD
Executive Director of the David Smith Estate

In Timeless Clock, Smith welded together silver rods of varying lengths and widths onto broken axes that transgress the rough perimeter of an open circle. The result is a complex arrangement of shard-like projections into space – like an exploded clock, perhaps, that can no longer tell time.
 

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