Gretchen Holtzapple Bender

I completed my dissertation at Bryn Mawr College on the landscape practice of Caspar David Friedrich and the gendering of place and embodied spectatorship in early 19th-century European visual culture. After years of teaching and thinking about world art, I identify now as a generalist focused on these key questions: Why does art matter?  Why does the history of art and architecture matter?  Is ‘art’ the right word?  Is ‘World Art’ possible or ethical?

This work has entailed radically reimaging the survey (Introduction to World Art) and working with my colleagues to generate new ones (Art and Empire; World Cities; The Viral Image). I am particularly interested in introductory-level courses as it is through these – and often only these –  that most people are introduced to the histories of art, architecture, visual and material culture.  Inspired by calls for social justice, the conditions of the global Covid pandemic, and urgent ecological crises impacting the world, I am now also strenuously advocating for “ungrading” methods and liberatory pedagogical practices.

Current Projects

My interconnected projects live under this umbrella title: WHAAM – “Why the History of Art and Architecture Matters.  The goal of WHAAM is to articulate clearly what distinct contribution art history, as a humanistic discipline, makes to a broad range of undergraduate students in the liberal arts curriculum, to younger students in secondary schools and to the public broadly.

WHAAM seeks to expand the mission of academic art history by emphasizing the importance of teaching and pedagogy with an interest in what purpose the discipline has for those outside it. Central to this endeavor will be an attempt to articulate art history’s 'signature pedagogy’.  What specialized and unique processes does art history bring to the classroom?  What particular skills are unique to thinking like an art or architectural historian? What impact can these skills have in civic discourse and what human needs can they address?

Engaging with the critical debates central to the field of World Art Studies and the ethical imperative of thinking about difference in a global world, I have been continuously reworking “Introduction to World Art” since 2003 and have created a new advanced seminar, “World Art: Contact and Conflict,” developed with generous support from the Global Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh.  In 2014, I partnered with the Pittsburgh Assistance Center for Educators and Students (PACES) to provide a series of workshops on public art for students enrolled in the Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy, a 6-12 magnet school within Pittsburgh Public Schools that culminated in a public art exhibition of work produced by the younger students, curated by History of Art majors.  This experience has inspired me to partner with the College in High School program in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences which provides high school teachers with the resources and support to offer for-credit Pitt courses to their students.  I am delighted to offer Intro to World Art to high school teachers in an era when funding support for the arts is significantly threatened. I am also currently writing and developing an Open Educational Resource, “How to Talk with a Work of Art,” which will include an anti-textbook. I am also partnering with Mark Collins in Environmental Studies to develop a new course: "What to Do? Ecological Crisis and Reparative Artistic Practices," a project supported by a Humanities Center Co-Teaching Fellowship. I endeavor to imagine a discipline that is inclusive, always adapting to new needs by addressing and asking urgent questions, one that is fully accessible and collaborates in a spirit of generosity and humility with communities local and global.