About This Course

Art Appreciation thoroughly investigates how quality is determined and created by artists in order to evaluate and appreciate art on a deeper level. This course emphasizes why each topic contributes to valuing a piece of art and provides the necessary knowledge to do so. Students are first introduced to the elements and principles of art and the importance of artists’ context and perspective. The course then covers different periods in art history, different techniques in art, and how to research and evaluate art.

This course, based on Christopher Gildow’s Art Appreciation, with additional open resources, was developed by Wendy Riley from Columbia Basin College with contributing work from Lumen Learning.

About Lumen

Lumen Learning’s mission is to make great learning opportunities available to all students, regardless of socioeconomic background.

We do this by using open educational resources (OER) to create well-designed and low-cost course materials that replace expensive textbooks. Because learning is about more than affordability and access, we also apply learning science insights and efficacy research to develop learning activities that are engineered to improve subject mastery, course completion and retention.

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.

You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.