From March 30 to April 1, students from the Honors Community traveled to Chicago, Ill. for their annual Beauty class trip.
It is an Honors tradition for the Beauty class to take a trip to a major city to be immersed in the fine arts that the students have learned about in the class. Honors at Union is an multidisciplinary, inquiry-driven learning community that offers opportunities for rigorous undergraduate research or creative work. In 2022, the class went to St. Louis, Mo., and in 2021 a Festival of Arts was held in Humboldt, Tenn. This year’s trip has been the first time since Covid that a group has been able to return to Chicago.
Chicago has much to offer for a trip of this kind, providing the opportunity to encounter and experience the three emphases of the Beauty class: art, poetry, and music. The students, accompanied by their seminar professors, embarked on an art and architecture tour of the city, beginning with listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The day after, the group visited The Art Institute of Chicago and went on a walking tour of major sculptures throughout the city.
“One of the features of our class and the way that we approach the question of beauty is that we do involve what it means to be an embodied person and what it means to encounter art pieces as a human being,” said Honors Community Assistant Director Joy Moore. “It’s important for us to situate students in the real context of encounter with art. It’s a really rich and holistic experience in a lot of ways.”
Getting to experience a major art gallery and a globally recognized symphony in a city famous for its architecture provides an opportunity to be immersed in and challenged by the arts. On the trip, the students were tasked with writing a reflective paper on a piece of art they spent time with at the gallery as they wrestled with the art experience and the difficult question of “What counts as art?”
Lucy Meurer, a freshman English major, described her experience with this reflective exercise.
“It really makes you stop and appreciate what the piece is and then what’s around it, who’s looking at it, like you have time to think about stuff,” Meurer said. “I think it was kind of just being in that experience even if it was mandatory for one piece, that kind of sets the mindset for this is a better way of looking at art instead of walking past and think ‘Oh that’s cool.’ It’s meant to be actually engaged with.”
