The advent of handheld digital devices has proved to be revolutionary for the teaching of art history. They make it possible to supplement, even replace, the traditional format of lecturing and communal viewing of a single screen. On their personal screens, students can enter a searchable world of thousands of virtual images: what the radical art theorist and novelist André Malraux, more than half a century ago, called the imaginary museum. For several years, I have been experimenting with my art history classes, showing my students how to use their laptops, tablets and phones to become active viewers and collaborators. Multiple virtual images transform the content, as well as the environment, of learning art history. Rather than being restricted to the illustrations in a textbook, students can use their devices to engage with online image sources such as museum websites, image databanks, and auction houses. Portable digital technology can turn the art history classroom into a collaborative and dynamic experience inconceivable a short time ago. Malraux himself, who believed in the power of art to transcend time and space, might be amazed at what is now not only possible, but commonplace.
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Martha Hollander (2018) studied this question.