An Incredible Classroom: Peter Hristoff on Teaching at the Met

Peter Hristoff's drawing students from the Graphic Design and Advertising Departments at the School of Visual Arts, New York, sketch in the galleries of the Department of Greek and Roman Art, October 2015. All photographs by the author

«My residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art has prompted me to make the opportunities and experiences I have over the year an integral part of both my studio and teaching practices—two elements of my life that I have continuously merged over the years. My goal is to make the interchange between these two elements as seamless as possible, and I have been determined to allow the Met residency to saturate my work and my teaching.»

The six-month planning phase of the residency, completed earlier this year, allowed me to spend as much time in the Museum as possible in order to familiarize myself with the collection and the gallery layouts. Last June I taught my first daylong drawing marathon at the Met for my students at the School of Visual Arts—an intense seven-hour drawing session that began in the Greek and Roman galleries before moving on to Oceaniac art, European sculpture, and, finally, Gothic art. The students, many of whom had never drawn at the Met before, had to complete approximately one hundred drawings that they would then work over the following day while in a studio with live models. Interestingly, many students did not want to draw over their "Met drawings" the next day.

Students from the Visual and Critical Studies Department of the School of Visual Arts, New York, during one of the author's drawing marathons at the Met, September 2015

Since September—the beginning of my residency at the Met and my return to the School of Visual Arts after a semester in Rome and a yearlong sabbatical—many of my weekly classes have used the Museum as a source of images for specific projects. My drawing students from SVA's Graphic Design and Advertising Departments are using images from the collection of the Department of Islamic Art in a series of (imaginary) ads for the Museum. My painting students, from both the Fine Arts as well as the Visual and Critical Studies Departments, are using sketches done in the Museum to compose paintings. Using the Met as a source of inspiration opens up a world of possibilities for projects, allowing students to select images that move or interest them as potential springboards for creating new narratives.

With that decision comes the analysis of each student's choices: Why are they attracted to this particular work? What moves them about it? What is its emotional and intellectual impact? These are the questions that help the students to understand who they are as artists.

Students from the Visual and Critical Studies Department of the School of Visual Arts, New York, take part in one of the author's drawing marathon at the Met, September 2015

Teaching at the Met is like working with an incredible library; it is an encyclopedic history book, an archive for the public's use. While technology allows us to instantly "search and see" Bis poles from Oceania, a power figure from the Kongo, or a sculpture from Afghanistan made by an artist who was influenced by ancient Greece, the Met allows us to walk around these objects and understand their scale and surface, to truly feel their presence. The better you understand a work of art, the more profoundly and honestly you can use it.

More than anything else, my teaching philosophy is to be the lesson, to personally set the best example I can. I, too, am approaching the Met in the same way I encourage my students to; I continue to be the inquisitive visitor. As the author Elias Canetti said, "It doesn't matter how new an idea is, what matters is how new it becomes." No matter how often one comes to the Met, every visit always feels a little bit like the first day of school.

Read all blog posts related to Peter Hristoff's residency at the Met.