The Program
Concept encountered, not content delivered
This is not an art history class. Students are placed in front of a work, a text or a space with minimal framing, and the history emerges through their own looking, questioning, making and disagreement.
Teenagers today get very little practice in sustained attention. The studio offers slower, hands-on work with real objects, real conversation and real critique.
All work happens together during the sessions. There is no homework, so the program feels like a purposeful weekly break, not one more obligation.
The Method
How a session works
Every session follows the same five steps, applied to new material each week.
- 1
Encounter
Direct contact with a work, a text or a space, in near-silence.
- 2
Open Inquiry
Students lead the questions. Disagreement is welcome and is not resolved too quickly.
- 3
Making
Each student responds with a drawing, a translation, an annotation or a note.
- 4
Critique
Generous but honest feedback, focused on process as well as the result.
- 5
Naming
Only now is the historical context given, to minds that are already curious.
Built on
The studio and atelier tradition, Visual Thinking Strategies, Harvard Project Zero's Studio Habits of Mind, and the Ørberg method for teaching Latin and Ancient Greek.
The Founder
Trained as an architect in Venice and an art historian in New York
- Architecture, University IUAV of VeniceBachelor and Master of Architecture, summa cum laude.
- Art History, Columbia UniversityMaster of Arts and Master of Philosophy in the doctoral program in Art History & Archaeology, focused on Early Modern art and architecture.
- Teaching at Columbia UniversityTwo years leading undergraduate discussion sections, and coordinator of the Columbia Summer Program at Casa Muraro in Venice.
- Bilingual and biculturalFully fluent in Italian and English, academically and culturally.