Bringing Life Drawing to Life: The Model’s Gaze as a Case Study of Studio Art and Art History Collaboration

In spring 2025, I designed a new course The Model’s Gaze in the Art & History of Art Department at Amherst College. The course asked, “What does European art history look like when seen from models’ perspectives?” In this paper, I will reflect on the pedagogical intentions, successes, and surprises of approaching this question simultaneously from the perspective of art history and studio art. The impetus for this approach came out of a symposium I organized at The Courtauld Institute in 2024, Pose, Power, Practice: New Perspectives on Life Drawing, which brought together artists, art historians, and models to collaboratively consider the subject of life drawing. To bring this framework into the art history classroom, I collaborated with a studio art colleague, Abby Flanagan, to organize life drawing for the students. The goal for these sessions was to have an embodied experience of historical practices, such as drawing models posed alongside plaster casts, as a means of understanding artistic labor from both the artists’ and models’ perspectives. The course was a valuable learning experience in the administrative and methodological challenges of working across disciplines, and I will share insights from the perspectives of faculty, students, and models as I argue for the benefits of this approach for artists, art historians, and those we teach.