Resume for Jan Looper Smith

Goal

To teach art history. Specifically, to teach courses of my design based on the museum research that I did with my husband in 2015.

Preparation

Study of Art History

In 2015 we toured the major art museums of New York City, Amsterdam, Paris, and Madrid.

Over the past twenty years, we have toured the major art museums of nearly every city in the continental United States. We have toured the most important museums in the U.S. multiple times, observing changes in what they exhibit and how.

Previous to 2015, we had already visited all the major art museums in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Russia, plus Vienna, Prague, and London.

When we are at home we follow the exhibit schedules of the Cantor Museum, the San Jose Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Oakland Museum of California.

When we tour art museums or view special exhibits, I take photographs of the art that interests me. Later I edit and organize those photos, researching the artists and the meaning of the artworks as I go. Frequently my research leads to an online report in blog format. In previous years, I produced several privately printed manuscripts for my friends detailing the art we had seen, where we had seen it, and how it all fits together in the history of art.

Background as an Educator

In my youth I earned a Bachelor's Degree and a General Secondary Credential from UCLA. I taught English and social studies in junior high and high school for several years in various schools in Los Angeles and Leeton, New South Wales, Australia.

In 1978 I started working at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale. In the course of sixteen years there, I designed and produced instructional video; I taught courses in operating systems and applications for personal computers; I designed, and sometimes taught, courses on one of the company's financial programs.