This semester, Sarah K. Rich, associate professor in the Department of Art History, revised her seminar on color and transformed her approach to the concept of the art history graduate seminar. In addition to weekly readings and discussions, her students also learned about the material features and applications of color from a wide range of guest lecturers in science labs, the Palmer Museum of Art, the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State, and in the School of Visual Arts studios throughout the semester. Rich’s seminar attracted students from art history as well as studio art, making the collaboration between them an important element of course learning. To view the entire gallery, visit the College of Arts and Architecture website: artsandarchitecture.psu.edu/gallery/sarah-rich-color-seminar.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 1
Penelope Van Grinsven gives her presentation on ceramics and color.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 2
Sarah Rich presents the copper reactions to her seminar following an experiment.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 3
A variety of natural objects used to create pigments.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 4
Valerie Dillon holding the Maxwell disc she made and then spun on a drill for a demonstration of color perception. For information on Maxwell discs, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_triangle.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 5
Sarah McClure and Harry and Elissa Sichi Early Career Professor in Anthropology and Associate Professor of Anthropology, performed X-ray fluorescence (XRF) pigment analysis on two paintings from the Palmer Museum of Art to determine what minerals were used to produce the colors in the paintings.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 6
Jack Hietpas, Assistant Professor in Forensic Science at Penn State, hosted a lab in which students could create Prussian Blue, which was arguably the first modern synthetic pigment and was favored by artists of the 18th century.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 7
Seminar students break and grind minerals to create their own pigments.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 8
Ashley Duffey holds up one of the books the students looked at in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library. The book is Maerz and Paul’s famous Dictionary of Color from 1930. In that work, the authors tried to specify every English word that had, until that moment, been applied to hue. Each color swatch is accompanied by a key listing the words that had been used to describe the color.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 9
Two students measure the ingredients to create chrome yellow.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 10
Hillel O'Leary scrapes the patina off of a piece of copper to create verdigris.
Sarah Rich Color Seminar 11
Students created Prussian Blue, made famous by artists, such as Watteau and Ingres.
