2025 Seminar Description

Art, Design, and Biology

Timothy Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art

This interdisciplinary seminar asks teachers who specialize in fine art, language arts, social sciences, and sciences (especially biology), to think together about how to use skills of close looking in teaching. How can looking at art help us understand science? And how can scientific thinking enhance our understanding of art? We'll consider significant issues in the history of science and in contemporary cultural discourse, such as botany and the politics of classification, ecological theory and theories of evolution. A key issue will be the importance of the study of human anatomy and animal biology for the development of European painting, and we'll question the role of racialized thinking in this discourse. We'll explore the role of artists in the history of science (such as the work of Charles Wilson Peale) and scientists for the history of art (such as John James Audubon). We'll also make a close study of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, comparing it with Yale University Art Gallery, to see how student engagement with both museum collections can be enhanced by close looking and visual analysis. The seminar explores the relationship between scientific analysis and artistic creativity using Yale's collections relating to both art and science. It's designed to appeal to teachers K through 12 in all fields, humanities and sciences.