Hi, y’all! So, for a little backstory, I’ve been kinda scatterbrained with what subjects I want to do and how to do them. Ideally, I’d like to do a capstone project that would contribute to my post-grad portfolio that would help me land jobs within the realm of museums, history/art history, and other cultural-based industries. Anything that lets me do work in an environment with creative and cultural purposes is a win. 

 

  • My first idea is to essentially make a fake art exhibition that I would make through a sort of digital exhibit that I would form and design myself. The idea would be that I would work off a past project of making my own exhibition that I did years ago that I made for an art history class. In the project, I chose the artworks to display, the theme around them, and wrote little placards for each of them. I could expand this project by designing an entire campaign for the “exhibit” with brochures, posters, social media marketing, design, and so forth. I also would like to expand the project further by redesigning the aesthetics of the project through new layouts, typography, etc. to better tie the project together. I mainly want to do this project because I think it would be a good opportunity for me to utilize my knowledge of art history in the context of communications / PR, and also challenge myself and my skills of design and marketing.

 

  • My second idea is to code a website that would be dedicated to art history to make art history digestible for children or new learners. I’d try to make the site feature interactive timelines, little feature pages of certain artists, mini themed “exhibits”, and hopefully (maybe a little too out there though), embed some kind of drawing application where kids could play with digital drawing and try to replicate paintings of their choice. I’d also include an adult/teacher follow along that would include links or resources to help enrich the kid’s time on the website. So often, I heard stories of schools limiting or cutting art programs from curriculums, and worrying about how it will affect generations of students with no experience with art history. I think this project would be a great opportunity for me to challenge my skills with coding and web design while letting me use my art history knowledge with a new audience in mind. I’d be using Adobe Creative Cloud, Atom, Filezilla, and Firefox Developer the most for the project. 

 

  • Warning: This is my wild card. My final idea is to do something with food and art history. In so many paintings and portraits, food is used as symbolism or context to a painting and its subject. Many paintings include recipes and foods that we don’t often interact with now daily, and are overlooked in painting. For this project, I would create an entire magazine editorial/issue that focused solely on food in art history. I would try to make some recipes, write a few little editorial pieces focusing on different aspects of food in art and their contexts such as paintings of feasting, still-lifes of food, the symbolism of certain foods in art, etc. As I already have experience writing editorial / blog-like content, I would like to expand my skills in design and aesthetics for the project. I would use Adobe Creative Cloud and some photography materials for the project. This idea for me is also close to my heart because I’ve been running a food blog for over a year now called “Eating the Eras”.
    • https://www.eatingtheeras.com/