Since August 2024, the Dalton Gallery has become the site for Building on Dana. The gallery is the literal and metaphorical center of the Dana Fine Arts Building, where students, faculty, staff, and visitors enter the building. Two rooms of the gallery have become a workspace and design lab in which to develop our exhibitions and programs for spring 2025. We are looking closely at the history of the building, its uses and transformations, and its current and future needs. We are also mindful of incorporating the community, emphasizing accessibility and technology infrastructure.
The curricular investigations include interdisciplinary collaboration among the departments of Creative Arts/Visual Practices, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Religious Studies.
Courses:
VPS 395 Topics in Visual Practices: Building on Dana
(Katherine Smith)
This course considers the past, present, and future of the Dana Fine Arts Building, including its various historical contexts: its position on the Agnes Scott campus, in the development of Decatur, in postwar urban planning in Atlanta, in postmodern architectural discourses (in spatial and symbolic dimensions) in the United States.
VPS 343 Three-Dimensional Thinking
(Nell Ruby)
This course practices three-dimensional art with a focus on mass, space, and light. Emphasis is on exploration of materials and conceptual development. Projects may include sculptural, environmental, time-based, sound-based, and kinetic works.
In fall 2024 this course considers the ways that we understand and represent architecture in 3-D forms, in our building and in our neighborhood, in collaboration with students in VPS 395. Students will study details of the building and create maquettes to be included in the spring exhibition. They will also work on the plans for increased accessibility in collaboration with students in WGSS 324.
WS 324 Critical Disability Studies
(Lauran Whitworth)
This course surveys key concepts, themes, methods, and debates in the interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies. It is attentive to the ways that disability intersects with other categories of identity, such as gender, sexuality, and race. Possible topics include: histories of disability rights activism, theoretical approaches to disability, queerness and disability, bioethics, media representations of disability, and disability and art.
One aspect of the exhibition is the planning for future implementation of ADA standards into an historical building. This course is relevant to those plans, which will be part of the exhibition, as well as a complementary exhibition (also spring 2025) by Anna Carnes, which will show art related to accessibility, ability, accommodation.
REL 210 Religion and Ecology
(Tina Pippin)
Religion and Ecology is an interdisciplinary course that explores the relationship of world religions with nature, meaning, place, and ethics. Focus will be on notions of “the sacred earth,” spiritual engagement with nature, approaches to environmental crises and climate change, interfaith collaborations, feminist ecotheologies, and areas of sustainability (food, soil, air, water, energy, lifestyle, technology, the future, etc.). This course is experiential and connected with the local environmental community through site visits and speakers. Cross-listed with WS-210.
Two students in this course are completing their practicum in the Dana Gardens.