Is It A Rembrandt?

  

Figure 2.15: Is it a Rembrandt's title screen.

28#28

This is a project built for the Northwestern art history department where college students try to figure out if a painting is by Rembrandt, not by Rembrandt, or the evidence is inconclusive either way. Students take the role of an expert on paintings who is advising the curator of a major American art gallery on whether or not her three prized Rembrandt-esque paintings are genuine. The Rembrandt exhibition is a public-relations coup and is opening very soon, so students need to do their work swiftly and accurately.

Rembrandt follows the INDIE model:

1.

Problem Selection: After an introduction, students get to choose one of three paintings to work on: ``Old Man With a Gorget,'' ``Young Woman at an Open Half Door,'' or ``Young Woman at Half Length.'' Students are encouraged to work on the one that most interests them.

  

Figure 2.16: The gallery: Choosing which painting to investigate in Is it a Rembrandt?

29#29

2.

Investigating: Each painting (i.e., scenario) has over twenty different tests that can be run on it, including scientific tests like X-rays and paint scrapings, examinations of background information from the curator's files, comparisons to other paintings, and simply close-up inspections of the various parts of the painting. Students gather evidence points partially from the tests themselves but also from hearing expert commentary from art historians on video.

  

Figure 2.17: Taking an X-ray of the painting Young Woman at an Open Half Door in Rembrandt.

30#30

As well as accessing its just-in-time help system, students can also go to a separate ASK system where there is a zoomer that lets them find the right questions they want to ask.

  

Figure 2.18: An outline-like ASK zoomer in Rembrandt. Here the student is learning details about Rembrandt himself.

31#31

  

Figure 2.19: Rembrandt's report-building screen.

32#32

3.

Building a case: Students can pick one of three claims: ``This painting should be attributed to Rembrandt,'' ``This painting should not be attributed to Rembrandt,'' or ``The evidence is inconclusive.'' Students can pull evidence points in from their notebook to construct a coherent argument for their attribution.

4.

Remediation: For two of the scenarios, only one of the claims is correct (the attribution of the paintings are well-known in the real world), but for the ``Young Woman at an Open Half-Door,'' the student can successfully prove all three claims. Students need to support whichever claim with evidence from several groups of tests and essentially show the curator (the client, in this case) that they have done a thorough job.

If students don't correctly support their claim (which is most of the time), students hear the worried curator telling them to look at her memo that lists at least one problem with their case.

  

Figure 2.20: Remediation comes in the form of a memo from the curator in Rembrandt.

33#33

5.

Wrap-Up: Students see a movie which is a TV broadcast that shows the curator talking about the attribution. Then the experts who have also appeared as experts in the help system give their real opinions about the attribution of the painting. At the end of this movie, students go back to the gallery screen.

  

Figure 2.21: The television wrap-up in Rembrandt.

34#34

We deployed Rembrandt for a first-year art history survey course as part of the introductory unit on attribution and roughly 300 students did at least one of the scenarios.