Italian Art, Italian Food: Florence and the Banquet of Culture

This class is being offered in collaboration with Stanford in Florence, Bing Overseas Studies Program. This online activity course transports students to three world-class Florentine museums - the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Students will be accompanied by the respective museum directors who will discuss their collections and take questions from the students. The visits are all double sessions: the first dedicated to the history of the collection and the second focused on the principal masterpieces each museum contains. Stanford in Florence resident art historian, Timothy Verdon, will guide students on these visits beginning in the recently re-installed Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which he directs, and then moving on to the Uffizi where he will be joined by its Director, Eike Schmidt, and finally, he will go the Accademia Gallery where the Director, Dr. Cecilie Hollberg, will discuss her museum. After each set of two museum visits, the course will feature a cooking class (three in total), taught by Florentine chef Maria Valiani, and inspired by the artists and works found in the museums themselves. One unit of credit, CR/NC.