Course
How to look at paintings
Organised by National Gallery
Discover strategies for getting the most out of your experience of the National Gallery Collection and looking at art more generally, in this interactive five-part course
About
The experience of looking at art can seem bewildering. We can feel we need to know a lot of historical information in order to engage with the objects we see in a museum or gallery. As a result, the art of the past might appear distant or disconnected from our own lives.
This five-part course proposes the opposite. We can make use of our own experiences to bring art to life, by considering the scale, colour, placement and material of the objects we see, and drawing parallels with our lives outside of the gallery or museum. This is an act of attention that anyone can do, and it is a way of getting closer to art, and more importantly, bringing it to life.
This interactive course will focus on a number of paintings from the National Gallery’s collection.