AP Art History students travel to Asian Art Museum in San Francisco

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Rose Guan

Makenzie Tomihiro (11) takes a photo of an exhibit of Ming pottery at the Asian Art Museum. A total of 10 students, chaperoned by AP Art History teacher Donna Gilbert, were part of the trip group to the museum.

by Rose Guan and Tiffany Wong

AP Art History students visited the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for a day-long field trip and museum-based art project today.

The trip members, chaperoned by History Department chair and AP Art History teacher Donna Gilbert, included Annabella Armstrong (12), Neymika Jain (12), Angela Kim (12), Arnav Tandon (12), Raveena Panja (11), Abha Patkar (11), Makenzie Tomihiro (11), Kaitlyn Nguyen (11), Rose Guan (10) and Andrea Simonian (10). Manan Shah (12), also a student in the class, did not attend due to a commitment to the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the final round of which he competed in in Washington, D.C. on the same day as the art trip.

Traveling by bus, the group left campus at 9:30 a.m. and arrived at the museum at 10:30 a.m., spending around three hours there before arriving back at school at 2:45 p.m.

“I’d never been to the Asian Art Museum, and I’d never been to an art museum dedicated entirely to non-Western art,” Andrea said. “I’m excited to see what that looks like, because I’ve only ever been to the de Young and the Legion of Honor and SFMOMA [the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art], which all offer a variety of artistic traditions. It’d be interesting to see strictly non-Western art.”

In April, trip attendees will submit a comparative evaluation of any of two works featured in the museum’s collection at the time of their visit. While the AP Art History students completed a similar project at the end of the first semester in January, a group visit was not scheduled, allowing students to visit a museum of their choice.

“I went to the Stanford art museum [the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts] to study some of Durer’s Dutch screenprint pieces,” Arnav said. “I’m looking forward to seeing lots of good art, because Asian art is something that hasn’t been emphasized in the curriculum as much so far at least, so it should be fun.”

Since the beginning of the school year, the AP Art History students have studied European, African, indigenous American, and West and Central Asian works. They will examine South, Southeastern and East Asian pieces similar to the ones displayed in the Asian Art Museum during their next unit.