Photographs and prints from the Johnson Museum’s permanent collection bring to life Paris in the 1940s and many of the themes found in the 2012 New Student Reading Project novel, The Life Before Us—from poverty and social inequity to religion, the Holocaust, and the cruelty of aging. Works by Robert Doisneau, Édouard Boubat, Auguste Loius Lepére, Auguste Brouet, Käthe Kollowitz, and other artists are included in the special exhibition, on view from August 6 to September 2 in the study gallery on Floor 2L.

As part of the project, students visiting the Museum will explore the collections of Asian art, prints and drawings, photography, modern and contemporary painting and sculpture, European art from ancient times to the present, African sculpture and textiles, and pre-Columbian sculpture and ceramics, proving how art’s universal themes cross geographic and disciplinary boundaries.

Using the Reading Project’s Discovery Questions in conjunction with careful study of works of art, students can engage in first-hand conversations with original works that convey a large body of information in extraordinarily concise ways. Through this experience, students will come ever closer in learning how to transform a personal visual experience into one that can be communicated verbally or in writing.

New Cornell students are encouraged to experience the Museum as a unique classroom, where being in the presence of a primary source such as an artwork can inform the wide range of assignments that they will encounter during their educational journey.

New Student Reading Project 2012 Gallery (Click an image to open slideshow)