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Visual Art in Europe : Reviews (Amsterdam)

The following program review responses have been selected for publication by Study Abroad & Global Engagement
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Summer 2012 Participant
My favorite part about this program was having the opportunity to really explore the places that we visited. We spent a lot of time just walking around and exploring. This was very beneficial to my photography project, and allowed everyone in the group to have a lot of time to sketch. I also really enjoyed spending time with the locals cheering during the Euro Cup. It was fun to feel like a local for a while and see what day to day life is like.

 

Kylee J Brooks, Summer 2012 Participant
My favorite part of this program was not just a certain place we visited but more about growing as a person by being able to see the world in a more independent way. You learn how to adjust to a culture different from your own, you learn how to use public transportation, and you learn more about what you are interested in as an art student. You find a pattern of things you find interesting or inspiring and ideas start to come to you. The experience is about education, and is ultimately for school purposes, however I think that the experience you gain as a person from learning who you are is the most important part.

 

Caroline Katherine Howard, Summer 2012 Participant
I think my favorite part of the program was how far from my expectations it ended up being. I researched each city I visited before I left and outlined a plan of what I wanted to see, what I was going to focus my photography on, what I was expecting to find. When we arrived in our first city it was almost immediately apparent to me that my plan was way too small and narrow for the experience I was having. I realized that I had to simply keep my eyes open, draw, photograph, and take notes on whatever interested me and worry about sorting it out once I got home. As valuable as it was to know some basic information about the places I was going, the experiences I had there could never have been fully planned from home. Learning not to pre-define what my experience would be was very valuable, and what I allowed it to be was far better than anything I could have planned.

 

Ashley Margaret Thomas, Summer 2013 Participant
I made memories that will last me a lifetime. It was incredible to be immersed in such different cultures and see not only their history from their point of view but to actually feel like I was a part of it.

 

Avery Beck, Summer 2015 Participant
My favorite part of the program was participating in Picture Berlin. This was an all day art walk which was the best possible introduction to the art scene, culture, and history in Berlin. It was really exciting to meet other people working in the same field I am hoping to become a part of.

 

Summer 2017 Participant
My favorite part of the trip was Berlin and being able to see firsthand a culture I've always been interested in. The Biennale in Venice was also pretty great.

 

Sarah Cecelia White, Summer 2017 Participant
This program was the perfect balance between education and fun. I loved getting to meet new people while being immersed in new cultures and different ways of life. This program broadened my perspective and I'm so thankful to have met such wonderful people!

 

Summer 2019 Participant
Feeling like an individual in these new cities, and having every day be full of museums and curated spaces while seeing the city up close. The group was a perfect size and I didn't feel like a tourist, which gave me access to being in public totally comfortably.

 

Kylee J Brooks, Summer 2012 Participant
Keeping a sketchbook from the entire trip was very rewarding, because when I look back on it I will know ever last detail of what we encountered good and bad. Also I found it rewarding to have some free time to explore things that we are interested that were not on the schedule of things to do.

 

Summer 2015 Participant
I found the variety of activities on the trip very rewarding. I love that this program was a general visual art program that covered several cities and attracted students from several majors and covered new art, old art, weird art, art that some people would struggle to call art, and also history, architecture, and cultural experiences. To me, this program was not about how to make art or how to analyze art. It was about how to become inspired, how to look at everything, and how to document the inspiration. It was about how to see the world like an artist, and to be able to do that better is very rewarding.

 

Annie Elizabeth Shoemaker, Summer 2017 Participant
We spent a fair amount of time in each city, so I felt like I could get a good sense of what it would be like to live there. I found visiting art museums and programs very rewarding and these experiences will help me grow as an artist.

 

Sarah Cecelia White, Summer 2017 Participant
The most rewarding aspect of this program was gaining a breadth of knowledge about visual art and specifically visual art in different countries.

 

Summer 2012 Participant
I learned that you get out of your program what you put in it. Your experience totally depends on you and your attitude.

 

Caroline Katherine Howard, Summer 2012 Participant
I gained an incredible sense of independence and self-discipline on my trip abroad. The program I was in was intentionally very open-ended and the amount of work you put in was very relative to what you got out of it. It was such a short trip that if I chose to be lazy for a day, or put off a journal entry I would lose out big time. No one was telling me to take notes of this or sketch that; everything I did was up to me, so I had to be very disciplined about working without a specific assignment.

 

Summer 2013 Participant
During this program, we got to see so many different types of artwork, from extremely different time periods and cultures. It really helped me get a better grasp of art history in general. The experience of seeing the art in real life is so different from seeing slides on the screen. It definitely put art history into a more manageable perspective for me. Also, it was very rewarding to see art that we have talked about in class and recognize it immediately.

 

Madison Jean Tubbs, Summer 2015 Participant
I learned that you're never as exposed as you believe. I was introduced to so many new art forms and information, truly a great experience.

 

Annie Elizabeth Shoemaker, Summer 2017 Participant
Any art student with an interest in culture would be well suited for this program.

 

Sarah Cecelia White, Summer 2017 Participant
I gained a tremendous amount of respect for other cultures while learning more about topics that interests me.