Mondays, September 9 – September 30, 2 – 4pm
![](https://barnesfoundation.imgix.net/sharedBackgroundImages/BF121_221128_172730.jpg?crop=faces&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=380&ixlib=php-2.1.1&w=380)
Edgar Degas. Group of Dancers (detail), c. 1900. The Barnes Foundation, BF121. Public Domain.
$220; members $198
(4 classes)
About the Class
Though Degas was a core member of the impressionist group, he sometimes found himself at odds with the artistic goals of his colleagues. Rather than taking his canvases outdoors, for example, Degas preferred to stay in his studio, where he could experiment continually in a kind of “restless search for new procedures,” as one critic described it. The artist’s technical innovations are the subject of the exhibition Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism, now on view at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
This four-week class, taught by the exhibition’s curator, will bring you into Degas’s studio. Using the Barnes’s special deep-zoom platform, we will look closely at key works in several media, exploring how Degas—constantly experimenting, searching—produced some of the most technically innovative art of his time. We will also discuss the impressionists more broadly, from their game-changing first exhibition in 1874 to the group’s dissolution in 1886, to better understand Degas’s contribution.
The class is online-only. More about online classes.
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Barnes classes will:
- Sharpen your observational and critical thinking skills.
- Improve your ability to communicate about art.
- Deepen your appreciation for cultures and histories outside your own.
Instructor
![](https://barnesfoundation.imgix.net/personImages/Headshot_Michelle-Foa.jpg?fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&h=275&ixlib=php-2.1.1&w=275)
Michelle Foa
Foa is an associate professor of 19th-century European art at Tulane University in New Orleans. Her first book, Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision, was published in 2015, and she is currently finishing her second book, Edgar Degas and the Matter of Art, which analyzes the artist’s career-long commitment to material and technical experimentation. Foa is the guest curator of Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism (July 13–October 6) at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
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