Summary:
In October I visited the Albrecht Dürer house, which has been turned into a museum about the art and life of the painter. Although the house had been changed since Dürer lived, it was arranged to show how the house might have looked in the late 1400s/early 1500s when he lived there and one of our tour guides was dressed in clothing from the time period. The students were also able to make small art projects inspired by techniques Dürer had created. Since the USA is such a young country, we do not have many museums that have information from so long ago.
Blog post:
On October 30th, I accompanied a 9th grade class to see the Albrecht Dürer house in Nürnberg’s Altstadt. The Albrecht Dürer house is an old half-timbered house built sometime in the early 1400s but partially rebuilt after WWII and turned into a museum in the 1970s. Albrecht Dürer and his wife Agnes lived there in the early 1500s while he worked as an artist. During our first tour, we learned about unique features of Dürer’s art such as his print-making, work with geometry and landscapes. We also talked in depth about his famous self-portrait, discussing imagery and how this portrait had really been a marketing strategy to show off his talents to potential clients. I was impressed by the students’ knowledge and how engaged they were in answering the guide’s questions.
At the end of this tour, students got to use techniques Dürer had created to make their own artworks, which was a great way to make the visit interactive. One grid screen technique for proportional drawing reminded me of an exercise I did in my own art class in middle school. It was fun to learn about the man who had pioneered this technique and had an impact on how I learned art hundreds of years later.
During the second tour, our guide was dressed as Agnes Dürer and led us around parts of the house that had been arranged to look how it might have looked back in the 1500s. Here we learned more about the Dürers’ personal lives – their relationship, cooking, the social context in Nürnberg, the importance of the business side of things, common games played at the time, and more. It was fascinating to have this peek into daily life so long ago. It reminded me a bit of reenactors in colonial villages I had visited as a kid, but even these were half as old as the Dürer house.
Outside of the Southwest or Midwest of the USA where there are larger Native American populations, it’s hard to find things that date back more than a few hundred years. In Pittsburgh, our beloved Cathedral of Learning is considered “old” even though it was built in the 1920s… Because of this, it was incredible to me that there is so much known about an artist who lived so long ago. The reconstructed rooms had an air of both familiarity as well as a completely different way of life that was fascinating. Meals may have been cooked in ceramic pots on an open fire and fashion was entirely different but people still entertained themselves with Tarot and cards, just like me and my friends.
