Lois Hetland and Saul Nava of the Liberal Arts Department will be leading MassArt’s new travel course to India, called India Now: Contemporary Art, Craft, Ecology, and Culture. This course can be taken either as a studio elective in Art Education or for Liberal Arts math/science credit, and the deadline to apply is April 1st. In the fall semester the class will meet Thursdays 7:00-9:00 pm; then the trip to Bangalore and the Andaman Islands will take place January 2-19, 2015.
Students can expect to make art in response to their experience in India; observe and carry out service work in community learning centers for impoverished students, where art propels the curriculum; and use art to investigate a tropical archipelago with a unique ecology. The course facilitates exploration of the aesthetics, ecology, educational innovations, and contradictions of India’s culture-in-rapid-transition. It is hosted by Srishti College of Art, Design, and Technology–one of the few Indian art colleges based on the indigenous instead of the colonial model of art education imported from Britain.
