Professional Development Workshops for Artists Spring 2021

This spring, I am pleased to offer a series of workshops focused on professional practices for artists. I have taught programs similar to these at RISD CE, the Providence Art Club, Plymouth Center for The Arts, Dartmouth Cultural Center, and other organizations. This series of classes will focus on sharing concise and useful information about specific aspects of art practice for artists of all backgrounds and skill levels. The goal of these programs is to make my most popular offerings available in an affordable and accessible format.

Each of these courses will run about an hour and a half long. Admission for all of them is just $15 each, plus applicable Eventbrite fees. All classes will be conducted live via Zoom. Questions and comments from students are very welcome. After class, students will receive a link to a private recording of the program. I hope you’ll explore the course listings below, and register via Eventbrite to join me. Please feel free to email me with any questions.

- Michael

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 Tuesday, March 23 at 6pm
How to Write an Artist’s Autobiographical Essay
Live via Zoom
Admission: $15 (Plus Eventbrite fee)

In this intensive workshop, learn how to share your personal story as an artist in a compelling and accessible way. Through the form of the short third person biographical essay, artists will develop their back-story in order to paint a more complete picture of themselves as artists and as people. By the end of the workshop, students will develop strategies and a rough outline to write their biography for use in a variety of applications including web and print.

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Tuesday, May 18 at 6pm
Pitching Your Art to Galleries
Live via Zoom
Admission: $15 (Plus Eventbrite fee)

For most artists, gaining gallery representation is a career goal. In this workshop, you will learn how to research galleries, find an appropriate venue for your work, and how to assemble a professional application for gallerists. By the end of the program, artists will feel more confident in their readiness to approach galleries in order to gain exhibition opportunities or representation.

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Tuesday, June 8 at 6pm
Pricing and Selling Your Art
Live via Zoom
Admission: $15 (Plus Eventbrite fee)

Pricing artwork can be a challenge even for seasoned artists. In this interactive intensive, you will learn the key issues to consider when devising a pricing strategy for your work. Various methods of pricing will be explored and students will leave with a better understanding of how to price their art in a way that is well-reasoned, fair, and attractive to buyers.

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Tuesday, June 22 at 6pm
Juried Art Exhibition Basics
Live via Zoom
Admission: $15 (Plus Eventbrite fee)

Juried exhibitions provide increasingly important venues for artists to share their work with new audiences. From exhibitions mounted by local art associations to nationally competitive calls, this class will break down how to research opportunities, how to select work for your application, and how to leverage being featured in such shows. The course will also detail what goes on behind the scenes from both a gallery and juror prospective.

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About Michael Rose

Michael Rose is an art historian, gallerist, and appraiser based in New England. Since 2014, he has served as Gallery Manager at the historic Providence Art Club in Providence, RI, where he oversees an ambitious exhibition schedule spread across three unique gallery spaces. Michael has worked with hundreds of artists and thousands of individual works of art. Under his leadership, the Galleries of the Art Club received two coveted Best of Rhode Island Awards for Best Art Gallery.

Michael is a sought-after speaker and teacher on topics related to art business and art history. He has taught courses in the Rhode Island School of Design’s Continuing Education Department as well as at organizations like the Plymouth Center for The Arts, and the Dartmouth Cultural Center. He earned his BA in Art History at Providence College and earned his Certificate in Appraisal Studies in Fine and Decorative Arts at New York University.

Learn more about Michael at his website www.michaelrosefineart.com

Class Policies
Students should be familiar with the Zoom platform. Students will receive the Zoom link for the class the day of the event. There are no refunds for cancelled reservations, but all registrants will receive a link to a private video of the class so if you have technical difficulties or are unable to attend you will still receive the content.

For questions, please reach out to michael@michaelrosefineart.com

Why Teach Art History?

I recently finished teaching my first session of a new eight week lecture style class I developed for the Providence Art Club: Art History & Appreciation. I proposed the class because I genuinely believe that a good grounding in the basic history of art can go a long way in helping individuals to develop better connoisseurship skills. It was the first time such a class was offered at the Club and I hoped it would garner enough interest to get the ten or so students needed to run it. Nearly forty students signed up. Over eight weeks, and nearly 300 slides, we covered everything from the Cave Paintings of Lascaux to the use of art in Beyoncé and Jay-Z's new music video. It was a great experience for me as a teacher. And a great reminder to me of the incredible value of art history.

Regularly ranked as one of the least useful, least marketable, least valuable college majors, art history is often used as shorthand for a wasteful course of study. Mocked even by then President Barack Obama, who in 2014 reminded an audience that you can often make more money from a career in a skilled trade than as an art historian. Art historians are portrayed as alternatively icy, stodgy, and elitist in the popular culture. In spite of the negativity surrounding the discipline, it still draws in students at all levels. But what value does it actually have?

Still from the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile, about a professor who uses art history to challenge her students assumptions at the conservative Wellesley College of the 1950s, starring Julia Roberts.

The study of works of art is not just about determining whether a painting is by Bruegel or Bacon. First and foremost, art history has power to create empathy and lead to a better understanding of and appreciation for cultures, traditions, and beliefs other than one's own. Art history also builds remarkable analytical and writing skills, born out of the thoughtful consideration of the historical context for a work and paired with a dedicated examination of the object in question. Additionally, studying artworks builds the skills needed to critically process the ever-broadening flow of visual media that comes with contemporary life. In short, studying art history enables closer looking and deeper thinking.

They say that "history is another country", and that although there may be vague commonalities between historic cultures and today's world, it can be difficult for modern audiences to ever truly understand the motivations, attitudes, and values of people living in England during the sixteenth century, or in France during the eighteenth. But through looking at, and deeply examining, the exacting portraits of Tudor courtiers or the lush paintings of the French Rococo it might be possible to gain a better footing in these foreign worlds. And in the process to also hopefully learn something about abuse of power, or despotism, or revolution. More than the rote collecting of facts or points of view, art history stokes continued curiosity about the subjects, techniques, philosophies, and personalities that have shaped visual culture and history. It enables viewers to explore and question the world around them, and to do so with a critical eye.

Teaching Art History & Appreciation reminded me of all the reasons I love this discipline. The skills developed through looking at works of art are easily transferred to the examination of other media. Honing one's eye on great works of art cultivates stronger cross-disciplinary understanding of architecture, film, and design. Talking students through the history of art helped me to better develop my own capacity to see these and other connections, to understand them, and to share them passionately and accessibly with my students.

One of my favorite quotes about education is attributed to Plutarch and goes something like "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." In teaching Art History & Appreciation, I had a great opportunity to reflect on the capacity of art history to motivate curiosity and connoisseurship in contemporary viewers and collectors. By walking my students through the history of art, I think and hope that I inspired a better appreciation for the rich complexities of the artworks of the past as well as a better ability to read and understand artworks of the present. At the end of the last class one of my students came up and said that the course had "lit a spark" in her and inspired a more keen interest in art history. I guess then, according to Plutarch at least, I did a decent job.

I'm looking forward to teach Art History & Appreciation again in the future, and am currently writing the syllabus for a followup class on Modern and Contemporary Art. For more information on my teaching projects, visit my Speaking & Teaching page.

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Two Upcoming Talks: Fall 2017

I am pleased to share that I will be participating in upcoming events this fall:

The Providence Art Club, A Rhode Island Institution
Sunday, October 22 at 1:00pm
Bristol Art Museum
10 Wardell Street
Bristol, RI 02809

Admission: $5 for BAM Members | $10 for non-members

This talk will focus on the story of the Providence Art Club from 1880 to the present. Founded “to promote art culture” less than two decades after the American Civil War, the Providence Art Club was part of the cultural flowering that took place throughout the United States in the late nineteenth century. Unique in its day, the Art Club was the first such organization to be co-founded by men and women some forty years before women gained the right to vote. The Club continues its mission today through unique social and educational opportunities for its members and exhibitions in three historic galleries that are always open to the public. I will discuss the Club’s history, traditions, and continuing impact on the Rhode Island cultural scene.

This talk will be presented in conjunction with an exhibition of work by printmakers of the Providence Art Club at the Rogers Free Public Library in Bristol.

The Life & Art of Florence Brevoort Kane
Sunday, November 5 at 2:00pm
St. Peter's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church
72 Central Street
Narragansett, RI 02882

Admission: Free will offering to benefit the Community Market at St. Peter's

Florence Brevoort Kane (1895-1956) was an accomplished sculptor who lived and worked in New York, France, and Rhode Island. A passionate member of the Providence Art Club, she left $150,000 to the organization upon her death in 1956 along with the bulk of her remaining work. While the Art Club likely has the most extensive collection of Kane's work, including preparatory plasters and completed works in bronze, St. Peter's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church holds several of Kanes important memorials and religious images. This program will feature three speakers: Judy Landry, who serves on the historical committee of St. Peter's Church, contemporary sculptor Mimi Sammis who will talk about the process behind creating sculptures, and I will be speaking about Florence's work and her impact on the Art Club community. Several works from the Art Club's collection will be on view at this event.

If you're available for either of these programs, I hope you will consider adding them to your calendar. You can also join my mailing list for direct updates about upcoming programs.

Best,
Michael