Howard Oakley
iTunes U is a great resource for anyone interested in broadening their minds, and if you have not yet used it, then I recommend you do so.
Professor Simon Schama may not be my favourite art historian, but he’s without doubt one of the most exciting and inspiring. If you find yourself growing numb in the National Gallery, torpid in the Tate or listless in the Louvre, imagine him as your guide, vividly talking about the sordid realities of the Masters. I wonder though, whether the intense accounts in his eponymous TV series Power of Art stray towards the sensational, selected largely to appeal to the wider audience rather than building a deeper understanding of the history of art.
Like others who have narrated cultural history on the BBC, greats such as Lord Clark (of Civilisation, as dubbed by Private Eye) and Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man), Schama weaves academic insight into his incisive tales. I was therefore delighted to discover a lecture given by him at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on the works of Turner. The Met, along with many other galleries, museums, universities and other educational organisations, is an enthusiastic supporter of iTunes U and has made that lecture available there, free of charge.
I’ve long had a feeling of unease about the iTunes Store that I’m unable to dispel. Although I’ve enjoyed many rich pickings from its various sections, its bulging catalogue always reminds me of the serendipity of a jumble sale. In contrast to Amazon, Apple doesn’t offer much depth in its store structure. Should I want to see if there are any iPad apps covering art history, I go to the iPad part of the App Store and then look in Education. There’s no sub-section devoted to Fine Art, or even any division between arts and sciences, so I’m left to browse through hundreds of apps, inconveniently split into free and paid-for. Searching the store is almost as speculative, returning some fascinating items, but with a frustrating complete lack of focus.
Rummaging through iTunes U is less haphazard, although it seems that the same joker who misclassifies books in Amazon has been moonlighting for Apple, too. Here at least I can dive straight into Fine Arts, then head into Art History. If you haven’t yet discovered iTunes U, then I recommend you take an hour or two to do so. Its coverage can be patchy in parts – it’s surprisingly almost lacking material on 19th century painting, for instance, apart from said lecture on Turner – but this reflects course content rather than any hidden agenda.
Most of the programmes available are real lectures, so aren’t produced to broadcast standards. You’ll have to suffer the idiosyncrasies of the speakers, but in return you get all the candour and authenticity of live delivery. Whether you want to brush up your French with the Open University or grasp the essentials of Old English as taught at Oxford, this is a huge step for opening access to learning: all you need is a (free) copy of iTunes and your own account in the store.
Maybe I was harsh in my castigation of Apple’s limited philanthropy in this column a couple of issues ago. I do not know how much iTunes U costs Apple, but it’s a fine investment. Now my latest free lecture, studies of the paintings of Veronese, has just finished downloading, so you’ll forgive me if I stop writing and start learning.
