Being a Zoom Student

Being a Zoom Student Many months ago, I signed up to a summer art history course at the Courtauld Institute: a week’s intensive study of Manet and Cezanne. The course would include guided time looking at works by these artists in the Courtauld’s gem of an art gallery in Somerset House. Alas, the suffocating blanket of Lockdown fell on us all. The Summer School was in jeopardy. The Courtauld decided to move some of the courses online, including mine, discounting for the lack of the real art. So it was, in mid-July, that some 20 students filed into a virtual lecture hall via their “devices” (the preferred, rather old fashioned, word for all our phones, tablets, lap and desktops).