Beth Harris PhDSmarthistorySteven Zucker PhDSmarthistory

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Recommended Citation
Harris, Beth PhD and Steven Zucker PhD. 2016. “Making the Absent Present: The Imperative of Teaching
Art History.” Art History Pedagogy & Practice 1, (1). https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ahpp/vol1/iss1/4
Art History Pedagogy and Practice is published biannually by Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR) in partnership
with the Office of Library Services of the City University of New York and the Graduate Center at the City University
of New York. For more information, please contact info@arthistorypp.org.

Making the Absent Present:
The Imperative of Teaching Art History
Beth Harris, PhD and Steven Zucker, PhD

Abstract

Since its emergence in 2005 as a free and open online resource for instructors, students, and
the general public, Smarthistory has made numerous groundbreaking changes and advances
for better teaching and more engaged learning. Playing upon the theme “making the absent
[art work] present,” we explain how Smarthistory’s lively dialogic pedagogy combined with
a rich variety of image views, reconstructions, google street views, diagrams, and essays has
successfully replaced the traditional dependence on an art history text for many instructors.
The result is an enhanced experiential and contextual experience for the student. For a
discipline whose works were often accessible only in textbook photographs, Smarthistory has
made art history literally come alive for students. We also discuss how Smarthistory has
encouraged collaboration from hundreds of art historians, nurtured open online publishing
opportunities, and broadened our ability to address a broad range of non-western art.
Absence and presence
Teaching art history is a great joy, and making it accessible to the greatest number of people
is, we feel, a moral imperative. Those of us who teach art history know how easily students
fall in love with our discipline, and that it has the power to increase respect for distant
cultures and enhance critical thinking about the images students confront everyday. But we
face significant challenges when we teach art history (and publish art history). As Stephen
Murray noted, “The paradox in the enterprise of the professor of art history is that we spend
most of our time as teachers in the classroom talking about what is not there—the absent
work of art, represented by a surrogate image projected onto a screen.”1 This is no small
challenge to face each week of the semester. While it’s relatively easy to read Dickens just
about anywhere, a work of art is best seen in person. Every time we enter the classroom, as
Murray suggests, we attempt the impossible—to conjure a work of art and the culture that
once surrounded it.
Smarthistory (smarthistory.org) was created to help with this somewhat absurd activity—to
make the absent present. In 2005, Smarthistory began as an effort to support students in the
Western art history survey courses we were teaching. As our content, roster of contributors,
and audience grew, Smarthistory began to receive both awards and funding. From the outset,
we wanted Smarthistory to support global art history. A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation for the years 2015 and 2016 to accelerate content creation, with an emphasis on
art from Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Islamic World, and Oceania, allowed us to

1 Stephen Murray, “The Crisis in Art History,” Visual Resources: An International Journal of
Documentation, 27:4 (2011), 316.

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significantly broaden our content and contributors and to demonstrate our commitment to
supporting global art history.
To make the “absent work of art” present, we use just about every tool at our disposal.
Smarthistory videos start with an audio recording of a conversation that takes place on site
and includes ambient sound (the muffled voices in a museum, the echo of a cathedral, or the
birds at a hilltop shrine). Art historians describe not just the art and its history, but the
experience of viewing. Smarthistory includes, wherever possible, digital reconstructions,

embedded Google Street-views, Photospheres, custom-made diagrams, and dozens of high-
resolution images (some annotated)—made available, wherever possible, with a Creative

Commons license via Flickr. See, for example, the essay on the Lakshmana Temple.
2
Utilizing multiple views and details of an object (in a video or essay) allows art historians to
model the process of close, extended examination of an object. Rika Burnham, Head of
Education at the Frick Collection, has written about close looking and the unfolding of time
in the museum:
Looking at a work of art involves a series of actions—scanning its surface, grasping it
as a whole, focusing on details, thinking and reflecting on them, pausing to look
again, reconsidering the whole in relation to its parts, and so on. In the end,
everything should come together, with the experience of the artwork unified in an
expanded whole.
3

As Burnham suggests, this process is perhaps the most important skill we can teach our
introductory students, whether that’s in a classroom, a museum, or online.
Audience and effectiveness
So what do we know about who uses Smarthistory and about its effectiveness? We know that,
while Smarthistory is a resource for many informal learners, it is primarily used by students
and their instructors in undergraduate art history surveys and more specialized courses, as
well as in high school Advanced Placement art history and history courses. These students
often find the resource on their own via a Google search but might also find Smarthistory on
their syllabus or in the instructions for an assignment. Some instructors play the videos
during class time as a prompt for discussion. Numerous college and university libraries,
including those like the University of South Africa outside the United States, feature
Smarthistory in their research guides. Graduate students rely on Smarthistory to study for
their comprehensive exams. And we also know, from what we hear in the field, that it’s not
just students who use Smarthistory; instructors also use the resource to refresh their
knowledge and to identify potential teaching strategies, which is critically important when
2 Cristin McKnight Sethi, “Sacred space and symbolic form at Lakshmana Temple, Khajuraho
(India),” in Smarthistory, May 15, 2016, accessed September 29, 2016,
http://smarthistory.org/lakshmana-temple/. 3 Rika Burnham and Elliott Kai-Kee, “The Art of Teaching in the Museum,” in Teaching in the Art
Museum: Interpretation as Experience, Getty Publications (2011), 16.

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teaching outside of one’s own specialty. As Dr. Bryan Zygmont wrote, “I believe
Smarthistory is as profound of a benefit to art history professors and teachers, too. We just
pretend we don’t need it.”4 This large base of users is evident from weekly and seasonal
fluctuations in pageviews. Summer and late December/January are significantly slower
periods than September–December and February–May. Weekly usage peaks Monday–
Thursday and is slowest on Fridays and Saturdays.
Surveys taken by a faculty member at a large California State University campus in 2015 and
2016 of two introductory art history sections—and shared informally with Smarthistory—
found that 22 out of 25 students preferred Smarthistory over the textbook, one had no
preference, and two preferred the textbook. When asked about their experience with
Smarthistory, students mentioned that, in comparison to the assigned textbook, Smarthistory
content offered a more in-depth experience and conveyed more information. One student
wrote:
Personally, I did not enjoy having to use the course textbook. I thought It was kind of
a waste, because I didn’t get much out of it, because of how brief the summaries were.
I would like something more in-depth with the subject. Plus, it was pricey, and [it] felt
more like a chore having it around.
This same student went on to say of Smarthistory, “I liked the fact I could listen to the visual
analysis and history that was narrated by the two speakers.” Then added that Smarthistory
“…improved my grades after using it.”
Over the years we have received hundreds of similar comments (and even a video).
Comments provide evidence of a student’s perception of their own learning, and what
emerges, unmistakably, is that most students and instructors who comment find that
Smarthistory helps them learn and makes the experience of learning more pleasurable.
Key themes that emerge from an analysis of student and instructor comments include:

1. Enhanced focus while studying and a perception of increased retention (Smarthistory
   is consistently described as enjoyable, helpful, effective, and interactive)
2. A higher level of interest in the subject matter
3. A deeper understanding of the subject (students regularly noted that Smarthistory
   provided more information than the textbook)
4. Improved grades
   Students also consistently express appreciation that Smarthistory is free and point to the value
   of videos in combination with essays and quizzes as being particularly helpful. One student
   wrote, “There is a lot of information to learn and remember, and I feel as if the videos were a
   great way to break that information down, step by step….” Our own analysis of user analytics

4 Bryan Zygmont, “Smarthistory is for professors and instructors too…” Smarthistory blog, July 26,
2015; https://smarthistoryblog.org/2015/07/26/smarthistory-is-for-professors-and-instructors-too/

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shows, though, that essays are accessed just as frequently as videos—based upon the number
of views—and learner comments indicate that one reinforces the other.
A comparison of a Smarthistory video with its equivalent entry in a textbook may explain
these perceptions. A transcript of Smarthistory’s video on the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in
Athens is more than twice the length of the entries in Janson’s History of Art and Gardner’s
Art Through the Ages—roughly 1300 versus 550 words.5 But perhaps more importantly, the
Smarthistory video uses over fifty high-resolution photographs and diagrams—and this
doesn’t count an additional Smarthistory video that focuses on the caryatid and Ionic column
from the Erechtheion in The British Museum.

6 The most recent edition of the textbook,
Janson’s History of Art, represents the Erechtheion with a single image, and Gardner’s Art
Through the Ages uses three images.7 Given the complexity of architecture in general, and of
this monument in particular, such minimal coverage can not possibly do the monument
justice. For most students, this is likely to be their only exposure to such an influential
building. Smarthistory doesn’t have the space limitations that hamper print publications, and
the video format accommodates many more images, allowing Smarthistory to include
multiple details and supporting visual materials. Nevertheless, longer entries and extra
images do not alone account for students’ positive perceptions.
Conversation and expertise
We believe Smarthistory’s dialogic approach and the emphasis on experiential and contextual
understanding explain these positive student perceptions. Smarthistory videos are unscripted
conversations that almost always take place between art historians onsite as they examine an
original work of art. We believe that the unscripted and conversational nature of
Smarthistory’s videos demystifies the art historical process and actively engages a student’s
attention. Many students reported a sentiment similar to one that wrote, “I liked the fact I
could listen to the visual analysis and history that was narrated by the two speakers.”
Smarthistory essays are written and edited with this same conversational and experiential
style in mind and begin with a narrative hook to draw in the reader. Photographs include
views that place the work of art in a broader context and include people—whether museum
visitors or worshipers—for scale and as an important corrective to the isolated object so often
reproduced in art history publications. Isolating the image from its frame, from its gallery,
from its chapel, and from the people who have come to visit it divorces the work of art from
its meaning and the world our students recognize.
While the dialogic and experiential are key values for Smarthistory content, openness is at the
very core of our mission. Art historians emerge from graduate school, Ph.D. in hand, highly
5 Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, “The Erechtheion,” in Smarthistory, December 16, 2015,
accessed September 29, 2016, http://smarthistory.org/the-erechtheion/. 6 Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, “Caryatid and Ionic Column from the Erechtheion,” in Smarthistory,

November 25, 2015, accessed September 29, 2016, http://smarthistory.org/caryatid-and-ionic-column-
from-the-erechtheion/. 7

See Penelope J.E. Davies, et.al, Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition. 8th edition (2011),
140; and Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. 15th edition (2016), 136-7.

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skilled in research and the ability to interrogate an object, but often poorly prepared for the
breadth of understanding required to teach the introductory survey. The solution, it seemed to
us more than ten years ago, was to open our classrooms. As we observed our colleagues as
part of our college’s peer-review process, we saw teachers describe for their students their
experiences of examining works of art in person—for example, the frescos by Giotto in the
Arena Chapel. Students were transported with them to Padua, and the absent work of art was
made present. We began to wonder why the opportunity to experience extensive work in
Padua with a trecento specialist should be limited to the thirty students in that classroom.
What if it were possible to use the web to open our classrooms, share this experience and
expertise, and offer our best teaching strategies to one another? Smarthistory is modeled on
this ideal.
Publishing and platforms
While Smarthistory began as a self-published learning resource, it has developed into a
collaboratively authored anthology with hundreds of contributors. Although collecting essays
was not initially a goal in itself, Smarthistory has now acquired, edited, and distributed short
essays by more than 200 art historians, curators, and archaeologists, and has become a de
facto art history publisher. Today, Smarthistory’s content is curated by its executive editors
with oversight by its twenty contributing editors. All academic contributions are donations, in
keeping with Smarthistory’s mission—to make high-quality global art history freely available
to learners around the world. As a result, labor is broadly distributed, which helps to make
Smarthistory scalable, cost-efficient, and sustainable. Over the next two years, we envision
Smarthistory, a not-for-profit, more fully embracing the role of a new kind of art history
publisher that creates and distributes entirely free and open content. Given the cost of art
history textbooks and the sizeable profits made by commercial publishers, open content can
make a significant difference for students and faculty.
Our guiding philosophy regarding technology is to avoid building complex functionality,
which requires investing significant resources over time to keep pace with rapidly evolving
browsers and programming languages. Smarthistory focuses instead on content by creating,
editing, and publishing written and multimedia learning resources from our growing
community of academic contributors. This strategy has led Smarthistory to take advantage of
existing free distribution channels with wide reach. Our presence on YouTube, Khan
Academy (which averages 12 million visitors a month), and Flickr (where we offer more than
6,000 high-resolution images for non-commercial use) has contributed significantly to the
organization’s sustainability. In total, Smarthistory’s content on Smarthistory.org,
Khanacademy.org, and YouTube had 25 million page views in the past academic year (July
1, 2015–June 30, 2016) and Smarthistory’s openly licensed photographs on Flickr have been
viewed more than 6,775,000 times as of August 1, 2016. Open publishers like Smarthistory
may offer a partial solution to the questions our discipline has been asking about the future of
academic publishing.

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As has often been noted, publishing image-rich art history texts has become increasingly
difficult for academic presses.8 In Art History and Its Publications in the Electronic Age,
published in 2006, Hilary Ballon and Mariet Westermann outlined the challenges for art
history publishing and noted that while “Traditional solutions are failing…we do not see a
crisis. In our view, digital technology is opening new opportunities and posing transitional
problems that are soluble.”9
Museum publishing, online, is one potential solution. Museums offer excellent online
resources, including exhibition catalogues, exhibition subsites, and teacher resources. We
firmly believe that a broad understanding of art’s history, art history’s methods for analysis,
and museum education strategies for visual inquiry are important tools for museum visitors.
However, museums have not, for the most part, helped to create content and a structure for
that content that supports learning that is more than episodic.10 Important learning resources
are developed for K-12 teachers but are generally not used by a broader public that could
otherwise benefit. Exhibition subsites too often remain isolated and detached from a broader
chronology, and they can get lost on a museum’s website when the exhibition has closed.
Smarthistory’s main peer in the field of providing online learning content for art history is
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. According to the
Museum’s recently published annual report, the Timeline had approximately 12 million page
views during fiscal year 2015.11 As a point of comparison, that is less than half the views
Smarthistory culled from its main channels as mentioned above. It is also worth noting that
the Timeline’s excellent content tends to be more formal, where Smarthistory seeks to
maximize the engagement of the learner. Smarthistory, with a staff of two and a small budget,
has an outsized impact, with more YouTube subscribers than The Metropolitan Museum of
Art and every other art museum in the world except Tate and MoMA—an indication that
museums could do more to help the public learn. Making art history broadly accessible can
make for more fulfilling museum visits, more students taking art history courses in college,
and a public with a greater appreciation for our discipline, leading to a new generation of
philanthropy that is sympathetic to the missions of the university and the museum. Perhaps
most importantly, accessible and engaging open art history content can enhance cross-cultural
understanding and respect for cultural heritage across borders.
Obstacles and opportunities

8
See, for example, “Publish or be damned,” in The Burlington Magazine, 158:1362, (September
2016); http://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/editorial/publish-or-be-damned.
9 Hilary Ballon and Mariet Westermann, Art History and Its Publications in the Electronic Age.
OpenStax CNX. Dec 1, 2006 http://cnx.org/contents/33c57596-5e5b-4081-ae62-9ee978e188c3@1.6.
10 Important exceptions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art
History, MoMAlearning, and online education resources at the Asian Art Museum and the
Freer|Sackler Gallery. 11 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Annual Report for the Year 2014-2015 (Nov. 2015);
http://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/Files/About/Annual%20Reports/2014-
2015/Annual%20Report%202015%20Entire%20File.pdf

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As Max Marmor, President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and others have recently
noted, there is every reason to be hopeful about art history’s future.12 Digital art history
seems to be advancing in a meaningful way, and images are easier to use for teaching,
learning, and scholarship than ever before. Nevertheless, we all know significant obstacles
remain—especially for art historians working outside of the Anglo-European tradition.
Efforts to control images (both what is said about them and their reproduction) remain a
troubling problem, and image rights can take months to obtain and can be very costly. The
chilling effect these issues continue to have on the discipline can not be overstated. Before
the eighteenth century, of course, most of what is studied in art history was seen (and in many
cases is still seen) as sacred, and as a result, reproducing (and sometimes just viewing) these
works is often difficult. From the outset, Smarthistory has sought to support not just Western
but also global art history. In spite of this uphill battle, significant headway is being made.
Since January 2014, we have added 37 videos and 153 essays on works of art outside of the
Anglo-European tradition.
We, as art historians, need to do everything we can to make the “absent work of art” present
for our students and for the general public. This effort is necessary to develop a new
generation of art historians excited by the questions our discipline asks and the objects and
sites it studies. This means using the most beautiful, high-resolution images available.
Museums, libraries, colleges, and universities also have a responsibility, since they constitute
an ecosystem that has historically supported the study of art. Much work remains to be done
in thinking creatively about the art history classroom, given new image and mapping
technologies and the ability for students themselves to create multimedia. We must rethink
our syllabi, our assignments, our lectures, and our discussions. If institutions continue to
embrace greater openness and become more willing to work together to educate students and
the global public with inexpensive tools such as short-form video, then art history will indeed
have a bright future.

12 See Max Marmor, “Art History and the Digital Humanities,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 79:2
(2016): 155-158;
http://www.kressfoundation.org/uploadedFiles/news/Marmor_ZfK_2_2016_FINAL.pdf

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