Class in the Prado

How do you make a class better? You take it outside.

Or, in the case of an art class, inside. Yesterday, my Art History class spiced things up and was held in the Spain’s acclaimed Prado museum. My professor works for the Prado museum and thus has access beyond the typical visitor. Before moving to Madrid, he was a professor at Columbia University—he is a brilliant professor and a wealth of knowledge in all things art related. The entire mood of the class shifted with this setting change—students were actually interested and paying attention (well, maybe at least for the first hour). Seeing a painting or piece of art face to face is infinitely better than squinting at a projected image, pretending you can see any minute detail or color shift. I am a huge fan of wandering through art museums and staring at the works; this class was my ideal, low-stress afternoon activity. Our professor posts the information about the most important works on our class’ dropbox, so we didn’t even have to take notes. We were free to appreciate the museum on (essentially) a private tour led by my professor.

Possibly the most exciting part of the trip was actually when class ended (after nearly 3 hours) and I was finding my way out of the museum. I finally saw Velazquez’s Las Meninas; the only thing I wanted to see in the Prado, yet ran out of time for when I visited the museum with my parents.

My class has two more prado visits, one visit to the Reina Sofia, and one to a Madrid Art gallery before the semester ends. Hopefully I know the museums fairly well by the semester’s end.