With South Africa still in lockdown at the start of the second semester at the University of Pretoria, the School of the Arts’ first-year students (and lecturers) commenced their second Visual Culture Studies module online from their homes. Worried that the students might experience increased feelings of isolation studying art history through their screens, I searched for ways to connect and engage. Unfortunately, none of the hundreds of online learning guides could reassure me that virtually lecturing students (who I had never met before) would go smoothly. How do we lecture students and encourage them to engage if our only tools are digital content? Fortunately, luck was on my side: I found the answer not in the digital (surprisingly), but rather in the content. Lecturing content centered on art meant lecturing content centered on connection. And so, as I started lecturing about art, albeit digitally, I realised that I was also teaching about connection, community and play.

Community and connection are concepts that many of us have missed out on during the Covid-19 pandemic. The creative sector of the economy, especially, depends on gathering, communicating and communal engagement. The artistic industry has therefore experienced an exceptional loss, not only financially, but also in their sense of connection. In an attempt to keep the world engaged with art (and art history), the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles challenged their social media followers to “recreate a work of art with objects (and people)” from their own homes. The results of the challenge have gone viral and launched a newfound appreciation for visual culture. More importantly, the challenge has allowed us to reconfigure the understanding of art from a ‘serious’ or ‘formal’ experience to a playful and fun activity that quite literally allows the viewer to step into and reenact art.

Keeping this in mind, we decided to start the Visual Culture Studies module this semester by specifically encouraging play, engagement and connection. Starting off with an introduction to experiencing art, students explored the notion of understanding, à la Susan Sontag, free from theory, analysis and enforced perspectives. Here, students shared meaningful encounters with art through journal entries. 

As the students embarked on experiencing ‘art from home’ versus ‘art in the museum’, they happily took on the Getty Museum challenge. As a way to reflect on what it means to engage with art from the comfort of their own homes, I challenged the students to either recreate artworks using accessible household items or to reinterpret artworks depicting isolation in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. They did not disappoint. In fact, submissions showed creativity and a sense of humour. Moreover, the students impressively showcased an in-depth and critical understanding of being alone, indicating the possible positive effects that isolation could have, both in terms of being human and creating art.

The Museum Challenge allows students to explore artworks and artists in depth, but in a playful manner. As students played, they also experimented with and learned about colour relations, creating atmospheres, and capturing aesthetics. They also connected with their families and loved ones, as brothers, sisters, parents, friends and furry companions were all cast as characters in artworks. The challenge and reflections confirmed that we do not need elaborate digital lesson plans to engage with our students online. We only need art. 

The first-year students now challenge the rest of the School of the Arts and the University of Pretoria to take part in the museum challenge. Share your recreation with the hashtag #museumchallengeUP.

Submissions from the Museum Challenge, image one (from top to bottom): Orateng Nkwe’s reinterpretation of Gyula Tornai’s The Moorish Smoker (1861–1928); Joshua Hunter’s reinterpretation of René Magritte’s Son of Man (1964); Katherine van Buuren and Robyn Jordaan’s reinterpretations of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine (1489-1490).

Submissions from the museum challenge, image two (from top to bottom): Charné van Onselen’s reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1495-1498), entitled “Last Night’s Supper”; Mylo van Straaten’s reinterpretation of Wim T Schoppers’ The Peanut-Butter Platform (1969); Berno van der Westhuizen’s reinterpretation of Pawel Kuczynski’s Train (2012).