Huffa Forbes-Cross

Pretty manageable workload. Readings aren't really necessary to participate in class discussions.

Overall, Huffa is a solid Art Hum teacher and if you're in his section then I'd say you're in capable hands. While I initially found his lectures at the beginning of the semester a little unengaging and our classroom discussion a little lacking, by the end of the year I found myself consistently engaged during his lectures and discussions. Part of that was due to the material, he definitely seemed more at home discussing Modern and contemporary art as opposed to classical works. The field trips in his class are definitely in a highlight and I wouldn't miss a single one if you can help it.

Two papers during the semester, plus one final paper that is an extension of one pre-existing one, 4 reading responses. Extremely manageable workload.

Huffa is a great professor. I would definitely recommend him for Art Hum, as he leads interesting discussions and is very relaxed. I would definitely encourage anyone to take his class.

3 short papers, midterm, take-home final, and a few reading responses. grading is highly centered on participation and reading responses, so make sure to come to class

I thought that Huffa was amazing. Yes, he seemed more interested in the modern art, but that is his specialty, and he did a good job of researching and presenting the earlier artwork thoroughly. He encouraged class discussion and led highly informative field trips to the Met and the MoMA. Honestly, I don't really understand the negative review. He was never late to class this semester, and was constantly engaged and on top of the material. He encouraged us to go to exhibits on our own time as well, and recommended specific exhibits and relevant books to us as we developed our papers. Art Hum was definitely one of the better Core experiences I've had at Columbia, maybe the best.

Standard Art Hum load. In the first paper, stick to extensive formal analysis (don't go tooo creative). But with the other two papers, you can provide more interpretations and creative analysis as it is appropriate for more modern stuff. I got an A with doing almost no readings (but I did a couple of the readings pretty closely).

I completely disagree with the previous reviewer. I enjoyed art hum with Huffa greatly and I believe most others in the class did as well. I did have reservations in the very beginning because Huffa seemed to be not at ease with the materials and also because architecture history in general was quite boring to me, but as soon as we started talking about sculptures and paintings, Huffa was very engaging and I found the materials very interesting. Huffa does like to pose open-ended questions to class, but this is a discussion-heavy class (CORE!) and I enjoyed hearing what others had to say about the paintings. Also, almost everyone participated at some point or the other, which is also nice. At times, the comments did become creative (stretching a little bit too far), but this did not happen that often. Also, I think this precisely is the fun of interpreting art in a discussion setting to begin with. The anecdote the previous reviewer provides is very misleading. The misinterpretation of the subject matter in the painting of Judas should not be attributed as Huffa's lack of preparation for the class. For the first class, Huffa asked everyone to send him a favorite painting, and he prepared a slide show so that each person could introduce him/herself when the painting showed up. The person who picked this particular painting was either not present in the class or did not know wha…

Three short papers, midterm with IDs, take-home final. Standard nightly AHum reading that didn't need to be done to participate in class.

The bottom line is don't take a class with Huffa. He is simply put a bad instructor, and I wish I had transferred out of his Art Hum class. Although I want to maintain hope that Huffa is academically rigorous in areas of his personal interest, he failed to convey this as a teacher. The questions he asked were often open-ended to a fault, and he often beat topics to death by continuing to ask the same question over and over again, "so what else can we say about this work?" Often, it seemed like he was fishing for a specific answer, but rather than offer it, he would repeat the question in the exact same terms, waiting out interminable pauses as the frustrated class fell silent, knowing that we weren't giving him what he wanted. Other times, in the free-for-all of class discussion, people would give answers that were clearly off the mark, but he would nonetheless spend a significant amount of time fleshing out speculative student comments rather than forwarding clarifying points of his own, even when it meant blatantly contradicting something he'd just said. It was so extreme, that one day a student completely mischaracterized the subject of a painting, and Huffa, who apparently hadn't done his homework expanded on the faulty interpretation, talking about how line, shape, lighting, etc. reinforced this idea. When another student pointed out that the figure in the painting was no…