Teaching with Art – Mount Holyoke College Art Museum

Intern Insights, Teaching with Art
Global Migration Through A Photographer’s Lens
Engagement Intern Charlotte Smith ’24 reflects on her class visit to the Art Museum as part of Professor Serin Houston’s Fall 2022 geography course “Global Movements.” She describes close-looking activities in the Museum galleries and shares her newfound connections within the disciplines of art history and geography.
Teaching with Art
Inaugural Mariposa Prize Winners
Thanks to the generosity of artist Hector Dionico Mendoza, an exciting new student award was established in spring 2021. The Mariposa Prize represents a collaboration between the Department of Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies and the Museum, and offers a new opportunity to celebrate the creative and inspiring work of Latinx students at the College.
Teaching with Art
Looking Closely, Thinking Textually
A Museum Session with "Poetry and Image"
In February 2020, students enrolled in Visiting Lecturer Sam Ace’s “Poetry and Image” course had the opportunity to look closely and think analytically about Barton Lidice Benes’s AIDS Museum (Reliquarium) at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.
Teaching with Art
Re-Examining Shakespeare’s Othello
An Artistic Collaboration
In fall 2018, students enrolled in Associate Professor of English Amy Rodgers’ “Activist Shakespeare” class had the opportunity to work with Curlee Raven Holton’s Othello Re-Imagined in Sepia print series, exhibited at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Students engaged with real-world examples of the activism-oriented Shakespeare adaptations discussed in their class.
Teaching with Art
Methoughts the Shilling: Teaching History with Money
Money doesn’t just talk. It’s also good to think with. Assistant Professor of History Desmond Fitz-Gibbon describes some of the intriguing stories told by coins and other money-related objects in the MHCAM collection: a Spanish real with layers of history, a gold solidus with a disturbing omission, and an assignat, France’s first paper currency. Taught bienially in the spring semester, Professor Fitz-Gibbon’s History of Money course explores the meaning of money from the distant past to the present day.
Intern Insights, Teaching with Art
Constructing Narratives from Vernacular Photographs
Recent Mount Holyoke graduate Emma Kennedy ’16 reflects on her work with a collection of photographs gifted to MHCAM by Ann Zelle ’65. During her curatorial internship at the Museum, and in her research for a final paper, Kennedy contemplated the mysteries of these compelling vernacular images.
Teaching with Art
Confessions of a Museum Guide
Medieval studies major and public history minor Kristina Bush ’17 shares her experience as a participant in MHCAM’s new Student Guide Program. Reflecting on two semesters of weekly meetings at the Museum, field trips, research, and tour training, Kristina writes, “I feel as if I have found my place at Mount Holyoke in the Student Guide Program.”
Teaching with Art
Art on the Brain: A Conversation with Professor Sue Barry
This fall, Mount Holyoke Professor of Biological Sciences Sue Barry taught her groundbreaking course “Art, Music, and the Brain” in the Museum for the last time before her retirement from teaching. Her students—along with the entire MHCAM staff—will miss having an art-savvy neurobiologist in our midst.

Blog Category: Teaching with Art