“Aesthetic appreciation was a learned experience” 

Judy Willcocks, Head of the Museum & Study Collection, Central Saint Martins

An Introduction to Object-based learning

CSM’s Head of Museum & Study Collection, Judy Willcocks, spoke about the college’s long and rich history of collecting and archiving art and design artefacts, and how these can be used in teaching. Judy explained how she and the museum staff enable today’s students to engage with objects first-hand, in the studio environment and how object-based learning can enrich students’ experience of learning about art and design.

Since the early days of the Central School of Arts and Crafts, the founders of the school believed that “aesthetic appreciation was a learned experience” (Willcocks, 2018), with physical examples of designed objects used as part of the learning experience.

Judy talked about how the museum & study collection evolved from a global collection, including Japanese printed and German film posters, to a CSM student and staff focussed collection, a change that happened in the 1980s and 90s. This change has allowed the college to focus on its own narrative and document key developments in the history of the school and its influence on global art and design.

Judy also talked about her previous experience as a museum curator, typically interacting with younger and older audiences and how this changed when she arrived at CSM and met the demands of undergraduate students.

“My background in museums before I came to Central Saint Martins meant I hadn’t really met a great deal of the kind of person I was going to meet at Central Saint Martins. A lot of the people I saw were either younger primary school children or what I would describe as older autodidacts, quite a passive audience who see you in the traditional curatorial model as being the expert in the room and that’s what they want to see. But when I came to Central Saint Martins I met a body of art school students who were completely different. They’re very proactive, they’re very challenging, they want to kick back and they want to learn actively through doing and making, not through passive looking and listening” (Willcocks, 2018)

The museum’s Emotional Response video explains how we might ‘read’ designed objects: describe aesthetics, understand design features, and consider associated meaning and cultural contexts of designed objects. Ideas about universal perception, different cultural perspectives, audience understanding verses an educated designer’s understanding brings up some interesting points to consider.

Judy discussed online archives and the various benefits and constraints of object-based learning in these digital environments. Object-based learning can enable students to increase their vocabulary about design, develop fluency in design languages, and increase their design literacy.

During the workshop we experienced objects in three different environments:

Physical
For this first exercise an object was selected by the participant from their immediate surroundings. We were then asked to spend a few minutes examining the object: by looking, touching, and to think about size, shape, materials, colours, and intended use.

Digital 
We then investigated a digital object, a round earthenware bowl

Photograph
Finally we looked at a photograph of a piece of clothing

Each encounter required us to ‘translate’ what we were seeing based on prior knowledge of art and design, but also broader knowledge about objects, industrial and product design, materials, ergonomics, ethnography, culture, politics, sociology, etc. The physical encounter was a much richer experience as we could employ more senses: primarily touch, and we could hold and rotate the object and look more closely. The limitation here is to do with access to objects, which is also true in an educational environment. Online archives potentially offer access to much richer variety of objects from international archives, but rely more on visual interaction alone, mediated through the frame of the computer screen, and perhaps also more on the user’s prior knowledge of visual languages as it’s a purely visual experience. 

The session brought up lots of really interesting aspects and approaches to object-based learning and highlighted its potential role in teaching art and design. The rich multi-sensory experience of engaging with design objects first hand has many benefits, including access to CSM’s archive, as well as encouraging the tools of looking and engaging to be used with the students’ own objects. This could be an exciting way to encourage fresh perspectives on design, to diversify references, and encourage a decolonial approach to discussions and critique on art and design.

I have used object-based learning in a more informal / less structured way, by bringing in graphic design objects from commercial practice – a great way to inspire students, show variety of typographic approaches and uses, to show materials and printing techniques.

Typography Show and Tell is an exercise I have ran with short course students where they each bring in a typographic object they like the design of. This has been an interesting way to show global approaches to typography and showcase the many uses, styles, functions of typography in contemporary society.

We also have access to amazing museum resources in London that I have used in teaching typography in the past, from the Design Museum and V&A (eg the Trajan’s Column cast in the fakes and forgeries gallery). MoMA and Cooper Hewitt have excellent online archives as well as the Letterform Archive in San Francisco. New technology such as digital 3d archives, and photogrammetry allow for more advanced interactions with online archives, providing richer interactions with objects that cannot be viewed first hand.

Bibliography

Central Saint Martins. (2018). Museum & Study Collection: Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo (accessed 12 March 2024)