Spring semester of my junior year at Denison I travelled to Copenhagen, Denmark to study abroad.
I am an Art History/Visual Culture and Biology double major, so it was a challenge to find an abroad program that offered courses in both the visual arts and in the natural sciences. Luckily, the Denison Off-Campus Studies office suggested I study in Denmark, which was the best experience of my life. While abroad, I had some amazing opportunities to study art history in Europe and to apply my Denison education in a different setting. I enrolled in five courses at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, including Modern Frames: European Art and Cinema, 20th and 21st Century Danish architecture, and Biology of Marine Mammals. It was the perfect combination of my two study passions. For a multitude of reasons, my favorite course was Modern Frames.
Modern Frames was my core course, meaning I travelled with this course on trips throughout Denmark as well as out of the country in order to learn in an interactive, enriching, travel-based environment. While abroad I had the opportunity to learn about modern art and cinema in the context of Denmark. Much like Art History professors at Denison, my knowledgeable and accomplished professors abroad helped facilitate our learning through study trips. I traversed all throughout Copenhagen to various museums and galleries, where I learned about Danish art history in particular. We also travelled to Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, to visit the famous modern art museum ARoS. ARoS is filled with important contemporary Scandinavian artworks. Visiting the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark was another major highlight of my art history education while abroad. Learning about Scandinavian art history has particularly helped inform and supplement my art history education at Denison.
In this particular photograph, I was with my Modern Frames class in Prague, Czech Republic. This trip was a study tour meant to give a perspective of European art history outside of Denmark. Throughout our 10 day Czech adventure, we visited Prague galleries, museums, architectural sites, and sites of major historical and political importance. We also travelled to Český Krumlov, a small city in Southern Czech Republic which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My experience in the Czech Republic further added to my Denison education by providing an important and invaluable nuance to my understanding of art history as a global area of study. Taking my education out of the classroom and into Europe allowed me to add to my Denison Art History education in a multitude of important, far-reaching ways.
