Teaching Asian Art as a form of Radical Empathy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The National Endowment for the Humanities: cancelled. The Institute of Museums and Libraries: defunded. The Smithsonian Institution: neutered. The Kennedy Center: hostile takeover. Such public arts institutions have been attacked because they are powerful venues for knowledge making and empathy building.

In our quiet, dark classrooms throughout rural, suburban and urban America, professors of art history can be part of the resistance to such attacks. While we know that learning about others’ cultures, arts and beliefs help to make us more creative, knowledgeable, interesting and compassionate, it is time for us to remind our students of this and to begin teaching our subject matter as a form of radical empathy. Radical, because we are facing an inflection point in society and in education as the humanities is under attack and as artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize almost every aspect of our lives. It is time for us to rethink how we teach our surveys and seminars to meet this cultural moment. This talk will discuss ways in which the teaching of Asian art history can be a practice in empathy building.