The Harvard course A Colloquium in the Visual Arts (Humanities 20) is an introduction to the study of the humanities through major works of art and architecture from around the world: everything from ancient Persian sculpture to modern stop-motion photography. The course is taught by five members of the Harvard faculty: Jinah Kim, Joseph Koerner, Yukio Lippit, Jennifer Roberts, and David Roxburgh, with guest lectures by Sarah Lewis and Robin Kelsey.

Each week, the students immerse themselves in the cultural and imaginary world of a single artwork. Following an expansive lecture on the work, the students gather in this gallery and other locations on campus for “looking labs,” in which they develop skills of close observation, description, and visual analysis.

The course teaches students what it means to engage deeply with an artwork, and how to think through an artwork about big questions in human culture: social justice, gender, modernity, religious belief, cross-cultural encounter, the nature of time, the relationship between art and science, and how different cultures have thought about life and death and the beginning and end of the world.