Sevvies Meet Seurat: Hopkins English and Art Galleries

Student-made architecture models cast shadows on their baseplates, a chalkboard fills up with community-made art, and a light show by visiting artist Jason Ting dances across the wall. From student artwork to visiting artists, the Keator Gallery features a variety of artwork throughout the year. Hopkins’ own gallery, however, is not the only exposure to art exhibits students receive; proximity to the Yale Art Gallery and other art exhibitions allow for off-campus field trips and independent visits where students learn to observe and analyze art.

Tosca ffrench ’26 shared that the Keator Gallery creates “certain admiration for individuals’ talents, as well as opening a space in which I can view individuals’ talents in a different perspective.” ffrench highlighted the importance of art, saying “I have understood for a long time how [art] influenced ideas and has been used throughout history as propaganda and communication” because “art can often represent more than words.” Micah Betts ’26 mirrored this sentiment when asked about his relationship with the Keator Gallery which, he said, “influences my relationship with art at Hopkins positively as it gives me motivation seeing what others have made.” 

She attested this understanding to the fact that she “grew up in museums” as both her parents work for the Yale Art Gallery. Due to her myriad of gallery visits, ffrench affirmed, “my appreciation for art has been growing since I was very young and it continues to grow.” While Betts has not attended an art gallery as part of a school trip, he has visited them independently: “I love the Yale Center for British Art as it has some of my favorite landscape paintings.” He recognizes the importance of visiting galleries, such as the Yale Center for British Art, because it “shows [him] the various ways someone can paint the exact same view in a completely different way.” Maeve Klatell ’26 has also visited many galleries and expressed that “public galleries, especially with free entrance, allow [her]  to have a more open and interactive relationship with art.” She praised the “abundance of galleries in the New Haven area” that “makes art accessible to me as a student and gives me the opportunity to engage with art on my own terms as a beginner.” 

Klatell is a student in Shanti Madison’s English 10 class, which on April 5 took a trip to the Yale Art Gallery. Speaking in anticipation of the trip, Klatell stated, “our class is in our poetry unit right now, so the trip to the Art Gallery will help to connect the literary art we witness in school with physical manifestations in the gallery.” Klatell also imagined that the trip “will offer a more hands-on approach to analyzing technique and purpose of pieces we observe.” Hoping for an opportunity to bridge the gap between literature and art, she said “I’m looking forward to getting out of the classroom to apply learned analysis to real-world pieces.” This trip was not the first English Department trip to the Yale Art Gallery: due to the similarity between the creative analysis-based skills learned in English class and techniques to examine paintings, the English Department, along with the History and Art departments, has previously led trips to the Yale Art Gallery. Last year, for example, the seventh grade class visited the Yale Art Gallery as part of the English 7 curriculum. Jemma Grauer ’28 attested that the trip was more than just a fun experience, but also an educational one: “the analysis process [for art] was similar to that of books in some ways, showing their comparability.” While drawing comparisons between literature and art, she stated, “it enriched my learning experience by being able to study relationships and fine details that added to the ‘plot’ of the painting.” 

Grauer reflected on her experience at the Yale Art Gallery: “The trip was pretty cool, and very interactive as we went around looking at different art pieces, and analyzed what they may symbolize and what the artist may have been trying to portray.” Grauer detailed that the English 7 classes “took our time with a few paintings so that we could get the full meaning out of them.” Grauer valued the trip because “it showed how we could do similar practices with literature, as they could also be considered art forms.” Arjun DiLuna ’28, who also attended the English 7 Yale Art Gallery trip, enjoyed the “fun [and] educational” trip that “greatly improved [his] learning experience.” DiLuna stated his appreciation of the trip: “I was able to see a very interesting art piece that was related to the book ‘Things Fall Apart’ which we were reading at the time.”

Visiting art galleries ‒‒ whether it be the Keator Gallery, the Yale Art Gallery, or another gallery ‒‒ allows students to build relationships with art. For some students, gallery trips taught them how to engage with art. Due to the artistic nature of literature, these artistic analysis skills transfer over to analyzing literature, prompting educational trips to art galleries, led by the English department. Thinking of the broader implications of art, Grauer says, “my favorite part of the trip was being able to discuss our different opinions on what the meaning behind the pieces of art may be with our classmates, and compare ideas so that we could have a wider view of what the piece represents.”