Days at the museum: Ruth Ezra's summer chats
September 17, 2020
by Sue Wurster
Private school spring break was one of my favorite times of year in New York City, and I took full advantage of the opportunities it always provided for museum talks at the Metropolitan.
A soft hum of anticipation accompanied the attendees as they filtered into the lecture hall, and my preferred seat (Row G, seat 18 — slightly left of center) provided a perfect view of the lecturer and screen, and it was always available. Every lecture, particularly when museum director Philippe de Montebello was at the lectern, was engaging, and my journals from those days contain enthusiastic notes and sketches reflecting my appreciation for the experience. De Montebello was, of course, extremely knowledgeable, but he was also personable and, perhaps, most important, passionate about the art he presented to us.
Ruth Ezra took me right back to those days with her BOLLI Summer Museum Chat offerings.
Her four sessions took us on a wide-ranging journey from “Bruegel” on Pieter Bruegel the Elder at Vienna’s Kunsthistoriches Museum (KHM) to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles for a look at “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master.” Then we were off to the Met Breuer in New York City to see “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,” and, finally, back home to the Gardner for “Boston’s Apollo: Thomas Eugene McKeller and John Singer Sargent.”
In each session, Ruth appeared “virtually” in that week’s museum and provided a “tour” of the exhibition in question. Not only did she speak naturally and comfortably about the work, encouraging us to view it in ways we had perhaps not done before, but she also moved seamlessly back and forth from her PowerPoint slides and extensive Museum Chat website to individual chat participant questions and comments. That, in itself, is an art!
Participant Charlie Raskin echoes that estimation of Ruth’s skills. In fact, he says, she is truly “a teacher. The fun part of her lectures,” he says, “is her insight into what the artist was trying to accomplish. She also sees and describes colors in a way that made me appreciate a new way to observe art.” Susan Erdos agrees, adding that, “Although her presentation is low key, her enthusiasm for the art comes through and is contagious.” She also indicates that Ruth’s level of knowledge and her preparation enabled her to “field any question that was asked.”
Ruth’s commitment and passion are evident in what she herself has to say about the experience.
She says that when assuming the role of “digital docent,” she “sought to introduce BOLLI members to major exhibitions at institutions across the world and to create an outlet for conversations about art to continue online at a moment when most museums remained shuttered.” But the experience was not without substantial challenge. “Losing the physical presence of the art object in all its strangeness — my museum teaching usually proceeds from the object out — was unique. Fortunately, curators at institutions like the KHM in Vienna and the Metropolitan Museum had teamed up with conservators to put some amazing resources online, facilitating a very different kind of material encounter, like going beneath the surface of a Bruegel or a Richter.”
When asked what she found to be most satisfying about leading these chats, Ruth focused on “the sense of community and collective experience that still formed around the art, even at a distance. Looking ‘apart together,’ I learned so much from the comments and questions of BOLLI’s ever-adaptable, always enthusiastic participants.”
Unfortunately, Ruth does not plan to do more BOLLI teaching in the immediate future, but she says she would love to do a second series of summer chats. “This is a galvanizing moment for change across the arts sector, and I’ll be curious to see what museums have in the pipeline going forward—and how viewers adapt to digital offerings. Looking back, this spring, as a BOLLI digital fellow, I had the pleasure of teaching Introduction to Sculpture in Global Perspective where I first experimented with creating digital experiences around viewing three-dimensional art. I’m grateful to the staff at BOLLI who supported and helped to trouble-shoot that project.”
When asked what comes next for her, Ruth indicates that “In between researching and delivering chats this summer, I defended my dissertation at Harvard (on the late-medieval sculptor Veit Stoss), and I’ve just begun a new appointment as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities. The spring semester at USC will most likely be remote, and I’ll be leading a seminar on relief sculpture, leaning heavily on the training and experience in online teaching that I garnered at BOLLI.”
Those of us who participated in Ruth’s excellent sculpture class this past spring as well as her engaging museum chats know, full well, that her future in the art world —nand in museum teaching — is clearly filled with endless possibility. I look forward, at some point in the future, to again taking my favorite Metropolitan Museum lecture hall seat (Row G, seat 18) with its perfect view of the lectern — this time for a host of outstanding offerings by Ruth Ezra.
*For those BOLLI members who missed Ruth’s summer chats or would like to extend their visits to “virtual” museums, the course site, full of online resources, can be accessed at https://sites.google.com/view/art-history-at-the-museum.