Someone remarked to me recently that he didn’t know Professor Carol dealt with art history. He just thought of her as the “music lady.” Au contraire. Professor Carol’s history courses are filled with art. You don’t have to look past the cover to see it in Discovering Music and America’s Artistic Legacy. You will also find it all through Early Sacred Music and, perhaps especially, Imperial Russia.

Carol wrote recently about my new course, The Rudiments of Music Theory. But now we have an even newer course: Carol’s Strategies for Teaching Art History. (We’ve been busy little bees this summer.) So let me say a few words about what Carol has accomplished. She doesn’t like tooting her own horn, and besides, she’s currently off in Poland and Hungary immersing a small group of travelers in the history of East European art and culture.

Strategies for Teaching Art History is not your typical fare. It’s not an art history course in itself or a syllabus for the subject. Instead Carol takes on the problems and opportunities—practical matters—that you might confront as you consider how to teach about art. Her strategies may surprise you.

She begins with a discussion of how to visit a museum. Not where to find one or what’s inside, but how to benefit from, or even survive, the experience. Museums can be overwhelming, and people often leave exhausted and with a sense that they didn’t really “get it done.” There are ways, as Carol explains, to conquer museum guilt and museum fatigue.

But you don’t have to go to the famous museums. Art can be found everywhere, and the opportunities for teaching and learning are all around you. Carol weighs the value of public art and art in neighborhood venues, along with the benefits and perils of online access.

You can also discover many alternative approaches to art—things other than artist biographies, dates, and famous paintings. Your students might be drawn more to the topics of chemistry, math, or economics of art (just to name a few). Of course, she also explains ways to make the traditional approaches to art more effective and how to tailor the materials for different age groups, from the youngest children to adults.

In three half-hour video sessions, Carol offers numerous avenues to understanding the history and cultural significance, to seeing and appreciating surpassing works of beauty, and to fostering the kind curiosity and enthusiasm that will last a lifetime.