VU’s Osher Lifelong Learning launches partnership with Fisk

Vanderbilt News

Students enrolled in an Osher Lifelong Learning class view renowned art at the Van Vechten Art Gallery, thanks to a new VU-Fisk partnership. (Steve Green/Vanderbilt)For the first time, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Vanderbilt is offering a series of classes taught by Fisk University faculty on the Fisk campus.
“We are excited to grow and enhance our curriculum for lifelong learners with this new partnership with Fisk,” said Norma Clippard, the institute’s program director. “Diversity and inclusion are among our most important priorities, and we hope to engage new lifelong learners in a variety of neighborhoods across the Nashville community.”
She added that the success of previous events Vanderbilt’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute has held on the Fisk campus helped propel this new initiative for a series of classes there taught by Fisk faculty.
Jamaal Sheats, director of Fisk University Galleries, is teaching “Art and Context” to students in a summer class offered by the Osher Institute at Vanderbilt. (Steve Green/Vanderbilt)
The first two courses—each meeting for six sessions—take place this month. Jamaal Sheats, director and curator of Fisk University Galleries and assistant professor of art, is teaching “Art and Context: Learning to Look” at the Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery. The course is a survey of world art as depicted in visual and written history from the Fisk University Galleries’ Collections and the current exhibition.
The Van Vechten Gallery is currently featuring the renowned Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern American and European Art, with works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Auguste-Pierre Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georgia O’Keeffe and others.
Sheats, who was born in Brentwood, Tennessee, said that he “grew up” with the collection and earned his bachelor of science in fine arts in 2002 from Fisk. In 2011, he received a master of fine art in studio art from Tufts University ...

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