SESSION: Learning to Look, Looking to Learn: The Power of Observation

In this age of instant messaging and sound bites, slow and close looking seem antithetical to our fast-paced culture. Much of the information we receive is often quickly perceived, reduced to catchy slogans, and lacks in-depth analyses. These speedy approaches do not address complex situations that require close and deliberate observation and scrutiny.

Close and slow looking involves developing the disposition to explore the world closely in a variety of settings and taking the time to observe details, move beyond first impressions, and be open to different perspectives. The ability to look slowly and closely can be learned and developed, offering transferable skills across disciplines; in fact, these tools are frequently used by doctors, scientists, and criminologists. However, educators, researchers, and scholars often under-emphasize the benefits of slow and close looking and how these strategies can deepen and strengthen thinking, learning, and understanding. The connections between keen observation and learning are often overlooked and undervalued.

What impact can slow, and close looking have on teaching and learning across all disciplines and content areas? How can a slow and close-looking approach to learning increase student engagement?

This session will explore the benefits, impact, and implications of slow and close looking across disciplines and in varied educational settings. We invite scholars, researchers, and educators to submit proposals that explore a variety of topics related to slow and close looking. We encourage proposal formats that offer participants some interactive participation in slow looking methods.

Session Convenors:

Susan Barahal, Tufts University

Elizabeth Canter, Tufts University

Session Speakers:

Amy Herman, The Art of Perception

Eye Spy: The Role of Visual Analysis in Advancing National Intelligence

Can close observation of works of art sharpen perception and analytical skills to support national intelligence initiatives?

For over two decades, The Art of Perception has trained global leaders to strengthen observation, perception, and communication skills through visual analysis of works of art. One of its most successful collaborations—spanning 15 years and involving three museum collections—engaged generations of analysts from a U.S. intelligence agency charged with assessing foreign military, political, and economic developments. Their strategic insights have informed senior policymakers working to assess and counter complex global threats.

This paper will outline the methodology underlying that collaboration and examine how visual analysis—using painting, sculpture, and photography—has evolved into an operational tool that bolsters cognitive flexibility and challenges default thinking. Concepts central to art history’s theory and practice—pattern recognition, critical inquiry, and the integration of multiple perspectives—prove not only applicable but highly relevant to the intelligence community. In an era of evolving threats to national security, training that sharpens perception and refines adaptive analysis is not optional; it is essential.

This immersive approach, conducted in museum galleries, is highly replicable and has fostered new modes of critical thinking by requiring participants to engage with unfamiliar visual information in unfamiliar contexts. By bridging the disciplines of art history and intelligence analysis, this paper will demonstrate that developing visual literacy through the observation of art strengthens the analytical capabilities necessary for cohesive, actionable intelligence.

Pola Durajska, Trinity College, University of Cambridge

Learning Geology Through Marble Specimen Tables

While close scrutiny of images is an undisputed foundation of art-historical methodology, the same principle is not consistently applied to three-dimensional objects of the decorative arts, requiring a longer analysis.

This paper investigates the intended dual function, scientific and aesthetic, of two early 19th-century marble specimen tables commissioned by Daniel Pettiward (1789-1834), and bequeathed to his Alma Mater Trinity College, Cambridge. Currently displayed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the tables blend with the equally colourful marble and mosaic backdrop of the Fitzwilliam Staircase, where their qualities and informative potential are lost to an average visitor.

The Carrara marble table with an intricate elliptical design to the incrusted top bearing a central malachite disc was produced by the Rome-based inventor of micromosaic Giacomo Raffaelli. The catalogue written by Raffaelli’s assistant survives, meticulously listing the type and origin of each geological sample, and states that the object’s purpose is to serve as an instrument for learning in the natural sciences. The matched companion is a Devonshire marble specimen table made by John Woodley, whose clients included the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). The juxtaposition of the two tables provides a counterbalance in both aesthetics and geology by contrasting the local examples with those from around the globe.

This paper will explore how the two objects were designed to serve their dual purpose, realised through extended sessions of looking, and how their solely scientific character was forsaken by the even polishing of their surfaces, which removed tactility from the stone identification process.

Veronica Bremer, Leuphana University Lueneburg

Seeing and Belonging: Street Art as Pedagogy

This proposal explores how engagement with street art serves as first-semester students’ inaugural academic experience during Leuphana’s Opening Week, introducing them to university-level inquiry through sustained observation. Before attending any formal courses, incoming students engage in their first project-based learning: exploring campus and city street art in teams. This deliberate sequencing establishes observation and reflection as foundational to all subsequent academic work.

This orientation through slow looking serves multiple pedagogical purposes. As students arrive on campus, the act of looking becomes the act of arriving, helping them inhabit the physical space, acclimate to their new environment, and begin forming collaborative relationships with peers. Walking, observing, and discussing art together can transform the campus from an intimidating institutional space into one they actively interpret and claim as their own. This embodied introduction establishes a sense of belonging before academic pressures mount.

Street art uniquely demands slow looking as it exists in dialogue with architecture, weather, and audience. When first-semester teams encounter local art, they must negotiate multiple interpretive layers: artistic technique, social commentary, spatial relationships, and the collaborative processes involved in creation. This complexity requires precisely the deliberate observation essential to deep learning and critical thinking.

Pedagogically, this approach establishes three critical foundations. First, it models collaborative knowledge-building through team-based discovery, where diverse perspectives enrich interpretation. Second, it legitimizes exploratory thinking as students learn that productive academic work begins with close observation. Third, inspired by their observations, students transition from viewers to creators, discovering how artistic production requires sustained engagement with materials, space, and community.

Audrey E. Kali, Framingham State University

Observing Insect Faces Through a Lens Closely: Looking with Embodied Engagement

The macrophotography of insects is essential for communicating environmental biodiversity to the public; however, science communication has become tethered to social media platforms. Advances in communication technologies enhance public access to learning about science. Yet, in relying on social media to educate audiences about the role of insects in ecological sustainability, the images become fleeting afterthoughts. In developing other educational venues, we need to address how the insects are portrayed. The customary response when someone sees an image of an insect is not affinity or affection but aversion and repulsion. But what if an image of the insect enables the viewer to bypass previous assumptions? In this project I propose that closeups of insect faces defamiliarize the viewer’s perception of insects as pests and brings them to experience facial visual cues as semiotic recognition and affinity. This close looking takes the “insectness” out of the insect and opens a way for the viewer to connect with the insect on relational terms. A macrophotograph of an insect’s face disrupts a viewer’s past negative associative knowledge and invites a way of looking that moves beyond the constraints of habit. When past associations with insects are destabilized in the image, the viewer’s engagement becomes embodied rather than cerebrally linked to disconcerting visual cues of fear and disgust.