Learning Through The Art

At the core of the LTA philosophy is the belief that artwork can, and, in today’s image-saturated culture, should, be taught to be read much like a traditional text. Teaching students to talk about art the way they would talk about text gives them a forum to practice critical-thinking skills and become active participants in a work, be that work visual or text based. Unlike text, however, works of art provide a highly accessible way for students to practice these necessary reading skills without having to worry about stumbling over a difficult word, flip through pages to find a quote, or struggle with decoding written text.

Additionally, it may be easier to find visual artworks open to a wide array of interpretation – thus lending themselves to be contoured more easily towards a specific teaching point (es: mood) while at the same time inviting more varied discussion from students. This is because we as a culture have grown familiar with abstract art, abstract expressionism and surrealism for example, whereas we remain extremely uncomfortable with literature that approaches abstraction.