Essay art gallery ABOUT DESCRIBE  island Introduction to Humanities Personal Response Paper Guidelines Also known as this is NOT a Research paper (100 points total) Purpose The purpose of this assignment is for you to have a face to face experience with an artistic work and then write about your response to it. This means that you must witness something live, i.e., in bodily form rather than in virtual form (a movie, book, internet site would not work). You must attend this experience this semester . Possible experiences you could pursue:  Art museum or established art gallery exhibit, including the Collin Arts Gallery   Dance concert at college level or professional    Theater performance at college level or professional Requirements: Use good judgment in choosing an art experience. Your little niece’s ballet recital is not going to give you an experience that relates to the content of this course.   A natural history museum, science museum, or historical exhibit is not appropriate. Do not write about work by a person who you know personally. Do not write about works on campus, which are not in the Arts Gallery. You must visit an art museum, art gallery, or theater or dance performance space!!!! Format: Your paper must be typed! You must turn in a paper copy to me and submit a copy to turnitin via Canvas.  I will not grade a paper unless I have a paper copy and a turnitin submission.   The recommended number of words is 850 words minimum .  Grammar and spelling count and are worth 20 points of the paper. Use double spacing in your paper! ***NOTE: The final page of your personal response paper must include a photograph of you inside the gallery or museum. Do not include a photograph of the work or works you wrote about. Attendees of a theater or dance performance must include a program.***  Content: Act as if you are writing for an audience who hasn’t seen or experienced the artwork(s) or performance. Your reader (me) is only able to experience the work(s) through your words.  It is your responsibility to look at the work(s) as objectively as possible and articulate these findings to me. Your reader depends on YOU to make the appropriate word choices, to consider what the artist may or may not be doing. You should avoid reading anything about the work other than: the title, the artist’s name, and the material used. The whole purpose of this assignment is to help you to learn how to trust your own abilities to observe, using your own senses, and make conclusions. You must tell your reader where you saw the work(s), who created it, and the title. If it is a performance, you must give the name of the theater or dance company, the place where you saw it, and the director/choreographer.  Paper Format: It is your personal responsibility to do four things, which are each worth 20 points:  1. Describe in detail the art works, dance pieces, or theater performance under consideration from an objective standpoint ...

1. Essay art gallery
ABOUT DESCRIBE
island
Introduction to Humanities Personal Response Paper Guidelines
Also known as this is NOT a Research paper
(100 points total)
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is for you to have a
face to face
experience with an artistic work and then write about your
response to it. This means that you must witness something live,
i.e., in bodily form rather than in virtual form (a movie, book,
internet site would not work).
You must attend this experience this semester
. Possible experiences you could pursue:
Art museum or established art gallery exhibit, including the
Collin Arts Gallery
Dance concert at college level or professional
Theater performance at college level or professional
Requirements:
Use good judgment in choosing an art experience. Your little
niece’s ballet recital is not going to give you an experience that
relates to the content of this course. A natural history museum,

2. science museum, or historical exhibit is
not
appropriate. Do not write about work by a person who you
know personally. Do not write about works on campus, which
are not in the Arts Gallery. You must visit an art museum, art
gallery, or theater or dance performance space!!!!
Format:
Your paper must be typed!
You must turn in a paper copy to me and submit a copy to
turnitin via Canvas.
I will not grade a paper unless I have a paper copy and a
turnitin submission. The recommended number of words is
850 words minimum
. Grammar and spelling count and are worth 20 points of the
paper. Use double spacing in your paper!
***NOTE:
The final page of your personal response paper
must
include a photograph of you inside the gallery or museum. Do
not
include a photograph of the work or works you wrote about.
Attendees of a theater or dance performance
must
include a program.***
Content:
Act as if you are writing for an audience who hasn’t seen or
experienced the artwork(s) or performance. Your reader (me) is
only able to experience the work(s) through your words. It is
your responsibility to look at the work(s) as objectively as
possible and articulate these findings to me. Your reader

3. depends on YOU to make the appropriate word choices, to
consider what the artist may or may not be doing. You should
avoid reading anything about the work other than: the title, the
artist’s name, and the material used. The whole purpose of this
assignment is to help you to learn how to trust your own
abilities to observe, using your own senses, and make
conclusions.
You must tell your reader where you saw the work(s), who
created it, and the title. If it is a performance, you must give the
name of the theater or dance company, the place where you saw
it, and the director/choreographer.
Paper Format:
It is your personal responsibility to do
four
things, which are each worth 20 points:
1. Describe
in detail the art works, dance pieces, or theater performance
under consideration from an objective standpoint. Make the
dance piece, art work, or theater performance come alive for
your reader!
Be sure to give the name of the place where you saw the work,
the person(s) who made the work, the title of the work.
The title should be in italics.
If you are writing about the visual arts, include the material; if
you are writing about a performance piece, include the names of
the persons responsible (choreographer or director, for example,
or performers). If you are writing about a performance, plot
summary should be kept to a minimum
. The plot of a play or dance, for example, is less important than
how the plot is conveyed by the choices the

4. director/choreographer, designers, and performers make. If you
are writing about visual arts, you should
focus on
one
,
two or three
art works.
If you write about a theatrical performance, you should choose
one or two aspect
of a performance piece (lighting, costuming, or acting). If you
are writing about a dance concert, choose
one, two or three pieces
.
Use descriptive words and significant details to create a mental
picture for your reader. The more specific, objective, and
clearer you are, the better. Avoid clichés (“beauty is in the eye
of the beholder”) and sweeping generalizations.
2. Analyze
and
interpret
the aspects of the work(s) you choose to describe. Interpreting
means that you attempt to understand what the work is
communicating, using the elements from the work to back up
your points. Basically, you are acting like detective who uses
the clues to figure out what it means. Remember to be careful to
not assume something that isn’t there. The evidence (aspects of
the work) tells you what you think it is conveying. There is no
perfect interpretation; however, you must be careful that the
work described fits with your analysis. Think about the choices
the artist/performer made and why he/she did it that way. What
may have been the point? To educate? To inspire? To make you
feel a certain way? To get you to see better? To make you

5. uncomfortable?
3. Evaluate
the work(s). Now, be subjective. Tell your reader how you felt
about the work(s). If you like or dislike some aspect of it, do
not simply state this, give reasons for why the performance or
works of art affected you the way it did. In other words, think
about how the artistic choices influenced your experience of the
event. It is your job to convince the reader of your aesthetic
judgment using evidence; mere statements of the experience
being "bad" or "good" do not tell your reader why it is worth
seeing or not. Remember, you are being responsible to your
reader by considering that she does not have your same
perspective, so you must consider that as well. This is an
important aspect of the essay, so don’t forget to write about it!
4.
Conclude
by addressing the arts in general as agents of cultural change,
as purveyors of ideas, or as communicators of values. In YOUR
OWN WORDS, tell your reader how any artist’s choices and
actions (the work itself being an active form of communication)
influence the world around them. Discuss whether an artist
should be aware of the consequences of his/her art work. Why
or why not? Then consider the ways in which are we all
responsible for what we say and do. At this point, you may refer
to artists or thinkers from our course work and compare them to
what you saw.
Citations
You should avoid reading or looking at anything about the work
beyond the title, artist’s name, and the material(s) used. There
is
NO REASON
to use research for this paper. It is supposed to be your

6. personal response
to the work(s) you witness. For example, it is
not
an explanation on Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi or Japanese
dying techniques. In other words, this last part is only important
if you do ignore my advice on how to write this paper.
If there are any program notes, wall texts in the museum/gallery
space, exhibition texts, or other written material or verbal
insights you gain from a museum worker that you refer to in
writing your personal response, you
must
cite them. Exact words must have quotation marks around
them.
According to the Parsons Gallery wall text accompanying
the exhibit, Jeff Wright’s photography was “inspired by his
interest in post-war Americana and nostalgia for the 1950s.”
“The work was painted in 1893 in Paris during the era
known as the Belle Époque.” (Dallas Museum of Art wall text)
The wall text accompanying Stone’s painting
Saint George Slaying the Dragon
states that he made it after he left the England for the U.S,
which is why he was interested in English historical works.
The galliard was “a renaissance dance done at the royal
courts.” (Bartel, 207).
The program for Congreve’s play
Dog’s Body
includes the historical note that it was first performed in

7. Lincoln Hall, Philadelphia.
You must also include a Works Cited page as a separate page at
the end of the paper.
Ex: Works Cited
Parson’s Gallery wall text on the exhibit
Jeff Wright: Destination West
Dallas Museum of Art wall text on Eugene Courbin.
Kimbell Art Museum wall text on Theo Stone.
Bartel, Elissa.
History of European Dance
. New York: Hodgkins Press, 1978.
The Irving Theater Center’s program for
Dog’s Body
by Carolyn Congreve.
Be sure to cite any source you use, whether it is the playbill or
Wikipedia. You must cite in the paper itself right when it is
used and in a separate Works cited page.
Even definitions must be cited!
Do not pass off someone else’s ideas as your own (refer to
syllabus and the plagiarism policy).
You
may not
use an assignment that you have turned into another class.
If you do use outside sources, you must both cite them in the

8. paper right after they are used and in a separate, Works Cited
page.
You must also put words that are not your in own in quotations,
and if you paraphrase, you must still cite the source.
If you neglect to do any of this, your paper is considered to
have been plagiarized, and will receive zero points. If your
paper is suspected of plagiarism, it will be sent to the Dean of
Student’s office.
Ignorance is
not
an excuse.
Personal Response Grade Rubric
Student Name:
_____________________________________________________
____
Turned in to Turnitin via Canvas (if not, no
grade)_____________________
Turned in a paper copy to me in person (if not, no grade)
______________________
Included photo of self or program (if not, no grade)
_______________________
Description (20 points):____________________
Analysis (20 points): _________________________
Evaluation (20 points): ______________________

9. Statement on artists’ responsibilities (20 point):
______________
Grammar and Coherence (20 points): _____________
Points off for citation issue:__________________
Points off for lateness (either of paper copy, turnitin.com copy,
or both) :_______________
Total Points
(out of 100): ___________________
Extra Comments: