Open Arts Objects (OAO) is an open access platform which provides over 50 free films to support the teaching of Art History.
Watch this short film outlining the Open Arts Objects project
Open Arts Objects:
We need your help! Our funding and support depends on feedback from you. Please take a few minutes to fill out this very short survey (6 questions, approx. 4 minutes). If you’d like us to visit your school or community group, get in touch: openartsobjects@open.ac.uk.
Partake in our Facebook group and check us out on Instagram and twitter (where every Monday when we post an interesting object/work of art at the start of every week for #materialmondays).
In 2017-18 members of the Open Arts Objects team served as academic consultants for the 9-part BBC series Civilisations produced in partnership with the OU, reaching over 13.7 million viewers. In 2019 OAO was short-listed for the Times Higher Education Awards in the category of Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year.
Dr Veronica Davies examines a catalogue produced for an exhibition of war artists' work at the National Gallery in 1942.
Professor Gill Perry explores an installation by the British artist Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991, which involved blowing up a garden shed and suspending its charred and broken fragments from the ceiling of an art gallery.
Dr Emma Barker discusses an eighteenth-century painting of a lady having a cup of a drink newly fashionable at the time – tea.
Dr Angeliki Lymberopoulou examines a Cretan panel painting (icon), produced on the island during the period it was under Venetian domination, that copies the work of a famous Cretan master, Michael Damaskinos.
Dr Amy Charlesworth explores the form and content of American artist Martha Rosler's postcard novels from the late 1970s through the lens of what has become known as 'feminist art histories'.
Professor Elizabeth McKellar explores Walton Hall, a classical country house, that now forms the centre of The Open University campus at Milton Keynes.
Dr Susie West takes a look at the small medieval church of St Michael and its new life on a university campus.
Dr Kathleen Christian discusses the history of the ancient statue ‘the Laocoön group' and its excavation in the Renaissance.
Dr Clare Taylor explores the design and purpose of this wallpaper whose pattern and colours were inspired by the new movements of the 1960s.
In this short film Dr Leah R Clark explores a Renaissance plaquette, which copies an image of Apollo and Marsyas from an ancient gem.