Moveable Arts Feast

A MOVEABLE ARTS FEAST

TAKING A CLASS WITH DR. CATHERINE WILKINS is a feast for the senses. In museums reimagined as classrooms, students see curves in sculpture and texture in oil paintings, hear their voices reverberate in grand galleries, and learn how their minds and bodies can be used in service to their community.

A cultural historian, Wilkins offers immersive, experiential service-learning opportunities for the Judy Genshaft Honors College in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota.

Building on her partnership with Connections (a program at the Tampa Museum of Art that uses art to help patients suffering from cognitive disabilities), Wilkins offered the first Arts & Health course with the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota during the Spring 2021 semester. Students honed sensory skills like observation and critical listening, and learned by experience how the arts can benefit people on both sides of the healthcare equation – patients and physicians alike.

“What I liked most about the class was the flexibility of the discussions,” says Laura Kulcsar, a biology major on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. “You can appreciate a piece of art and then hear from someone else what they think. Everybody responds differently.”

Wilkins’ Fall 2021 course, “St. Petersburg: City of the Arts,” tapped into St. Pete’s thriving arts scene. Students explored the ways in which politics, colonialism, class, gender, and ethnicity are reflected in museum collections and exhibits. The class visited the Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Art, James Museum, St. Petersburg Museum of History, and Florida Holocaust Museum. They then applied their knowledge and insights by crafting a strategic plan for their community partner, the James Museum.

“I want to challenge the idea that museums are ossified, elite spaces and instead show them to be accessible and adaptable organizations whose work connects to the health, politics, and social justice of the community,” says Wilkins. “My goal is to help students feel empowered and at home in these spaces as they develop knowledge, skills, and a voice that can contribute to the institution.”

- Dr. Thomas Smith, Dr. Catherine Wilkins and Dr. Cayla Lanier

Top: Honors Faculty member, Catherine Wilkins, prepares first-year students for a drawing activity using Leviathan Zodiac (Kehinde Wiley, 2011) at the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts.

Bottom: Students from the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus learn the basics of Visual Thinking Strategies from Museum Educator Laura Steefels-Moore at the Ringling Art Museum.