Megan Lorraine Debin is a professor of art history at Fullerton College. In 2023, she launched Art Trippin’ to make art history education more accessible through travel videos, online lectures, and tours.
Credit: Photograph by Irvin RiveraWhere did you first discover your passion for teaching art history?
I studied abroad in Bologna, Italy. I had a professor named Vera Fortunati. I will never forget the day that she said, “We’re going to talk about this Rafael painting in class, but I think we should just go look at it in person,” and she took us down the street from the university classroom into the museum. It just blew me away. That moment, I remember thinking, “Oh, I want to be like her when I grow up. I want to open up people’s worlds.”
What is the origin story of Art Trippin’?
I have been so fortunate through my career and through my lifestyle to be able to travel all over the world, to see art in person, and to have all these really enriching cultural experiences. I would come back to the classroom and tell my students stories of what I saw. They would always tell me, “You should make videos so we can travel with you.” So it sort of started because my students were asking me to do it.
You also enjoy highlighting the work of underrepresented artists. Why?
Because they were there. I always like to tell people about the Italian Baroque artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, because she was really well known and celebrated in her time, but over the course of hundreds of years, she and so many other artists were written out of the histories. My undergraduate education was so focused on older white European male artists. That’s really where I see the gap that Art Trippin’ can fill, focusing on these artists who are not always included in the larger narratives of history.
FIND OUT MORE!
arttrippin.com
