Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Samantha Goss

Abstract

Florence, Italy has long been a destination for traveling artists and those looking for international inspiration. I wanted to be part of this tradition and experience my own contemporary version of the Grand Tour, a rite of passage trip to Europe for men in the 17th to early 19th century. Several notable female artists also participated in the Grand Tour or their own European travel and served as inspiration for this project. As someone who values travel and planned to study abroad, I was drawn to this history and the idea of developing as a person and artist through immersion in the landscape, culture, and deep connections to art history. The cost of a Grand Tour was prohibitive for many. For the more privileged classes, it was a popular experience. This made me wonder why this rite of passage has not remained or expanded as a more common experience for young adults and artists. I also began to reflect on my peers and family members who do not have this same pull to see the world. I see the lack of desire to travel as a problem. The bigger issue may be how easy it is to think you have experienced things through the media. I could not accept that the impact of pictures and videos could have the same impact as the experience did on those completing a Grand Tour.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether my travel to Florence can foster artistic inspiration and productivity comparable to the female artists on the Grand Tour or similar trips. As I am about to finish my undergraduate degree at 21 years old, I am at a transitional age when many artists would undertake these trips. Imagining myself living an Italian lifestyle, paired with the daily exposure to art and history, inspired me most. Discovering the Grand Tour tradition gave me the idea to utilize my studies at the Florence University of the Arts as a key experience of data collection, analysis, and art creation to disseminate my travels and new understandings through an exhibit building on my coursework in art, art history, museum studies, and graphic design. I remained open to realizations that would arise throughout my thesis work, knowing how integral reflection after the artmaking and travel would be for final understandings. I entered this thesis with broad goals of comparing my experience to past artists, creating work inspired by Florence and my travels, and sharing that work and the impact of my travels through an exhibition.

Year of Submission

2025

Department

Department of Art

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2025

Object Description

1 PDF file (26 pages)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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