Field Trip!
We’re not in grade school anymore, but that doesn’t mean classes won’t go on the occasional field trip. Today I spent the morning viewing the D’Arcy Collection at Loyola’s own art museum, LUMA. I’ve actually never taken the opportunity to visit the museum, located at the Water Tower Campus and conveniently right next to the Hershey store!
It was a mandatory field trip for my Art History course, Picturing Women in Art. This is also a Women’s Studies, Gender Studies course.
The focus of the course is women represented in art as well as women artists of the Renaissance and Baroque period. Today we observed some pieces that would be found in Renaissance homes, usually pieces that depict some type of religious or classical image or story. Right now we are discussing the rituals of marriages and how marriage chests, known as “cassone,” often had paneling painted to illustrate a story. This story was usually meant to serve as a lesson of virtues for the married couple.
These “cassoni” (plural) are actually pretty rare, and today I learned that Loyola owns several now because of the recent donation made by the Cuneo family. The Cuneo estate in Vernon Hills was donated to Loyola in 2009, hence the new Cuneo Hall, (which, by the way, looks nearly complete and very nice on campus!)
The points I’m trying to get to are: field trips are fun, and Loyola has many impressive resources to supplement learning outside the classroom. I will definitely be making a trip back to LUMA, which will soon be opening a new exhibit “Heaven and Hell,” which features self-taught artists and looks pretty interesting!
