FONDAMENTA INSTITUTE
A Studio for Critical Thinking
About
Learning to Think
through Observation, Questioning, and Discussion
Fondamenta Institute is an educational initiative based in New York City that provides a supportive environment for high school students to develop critical thinking through direct engagement with subjects across the arts and sciences.
The Method
Concept encountered, not content delivered.
The intent is to use the topic of the program, Italian Art & Culture for example, as material through which students develop transferable capacities — ways of seeing, arguing, and thinking — that they carry into any field they eventually pursue. The students are not simply being taught facts about Italian art. Through direct encounter with and discussion around it, they are being trained in attention, judgment, and articulate thought.
The fast, fragmented, digitally saturated adolescence gives teenagers very little practice in sustained attention. The studio’s slower, embodied, materially grounded work — real objects, real conversation, real critique — offers a felt, practiced alternative to that condition.
How a session works
- 1Encounter
Direct, unmediated contact with a work, text or space. Near-silence.
- 2Open Inquiry
Student-led questioning. Disagreement is welcomed, not resolved quickly.
- 3Making
Each student responds: a drawing, a translation, an annotation, a note.
- 4Critique
Generous but honest, focused on process, not only the finished result.
- 5Naming
Only now is the historical frame supplied, landing on curious minds.
Established traditions
- Traditional studio and atelier model
- Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)
- Studio Habits of Mind (Harvard Project Zero)
- Ørberg method for Latin and Ancient Greek
All the work is intended to be developed within the group during the sessions – no homework is assigned between weeks, even though personal curiosity and practice are always encouraged. The programs are not meant to feel like an overwhelming addition to school tasks, but rather a weekly break where students can deliberately free their minds from their canonical academic journey.
In Italian, the foundations. In Venice, the stone walkway built along a canal.
The Italian Art & Culture Program
Following the pedagogical method of Fondamenta Institute, the Italian Art & Culture Program offers an educational experience designed to develop critical thinking through the study of Italian art and culture, from its ancient origins to the modern era. Students are placed in front of a work of art, a text, or a space with minimal framing, allowing historical and cultural meaning to emerge through their own observation, questioning, interpretation, and debate.
Jan–May 2027
Ways of Seeing
Different media, different approaches
Each week’s discussion is approached through varied media, so the studio brings out each student’s own way of seeing rather than requiring one fixed skill of everyone. To support the development of critical thinking, different modes recur throughout the semester.
- Drawing & Observation
Direct observational drawing in front of the work itself: proportion, composition, materials. The hand follows the discussion, reproducing what the eyes see or checking what the mind is thinking.
- Literary Analysis
Close reading of literary texts to develop interpretation, critical thinking and historical understanding. Students learn to analyze language, themes, narrative structure, and the relationship between literature, art and culture.
- Elementary Italian
Basic Italian, both for analyzing art and literature and for practical purposes, like the final trip.
- Curatorial Work
Object selection, wall-text writing and argument-building: the beginnings of each student’s personal capstone body of work, developed over the year.
- Archive & Library Research
Primary-source literacy: reading a document, a plan, a ledger, not just a textbook summary. A kind of intellectual rigor rarely offered to teenagers.
The City
A different cultural institution every week
All sessions take place in a different cultural institution in the city, connected to its topic, offering a new way to know New York and its remarkable cultural resources. Among the institutions:
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Frick Collection
- The Morgan Library & Museum
- Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library
- The New York Public Library
- Italian Cultural Institute of New York
- Casa Italiana
- Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
- Bard Graduate Center
Beyond the Classroom
An investment for their present and future
Beginning in high school, the program offers something that reaches beyond the present moment, with clear benefits for college and for whatever path a student chooses.
Direct contact with curators, conservators, architects, gallerists and foundation directors: a real look at what a working life in culture involves.
In college, students discuss material in seminars, often read in advance or just encountered. Practicing this in high school gives them a real advantage.
A distinctive credential: a small cohort, real institutional access, an original capstone project, and relationships with respected practitioners.
Critical thinking, attention, judgment and articulate thought, developed through their interest in art and culture.
The Culmination
A trip to Italy
The Italian Art & Culture Program concludes with travel to Italy, where students encounter firsthand and put into practice what was discussed in New York. The body of work built over the semester meets the place it was made in response to.
Parents travel alongside the group but follow their own itinerary during the day: visits to private collections, architectural tours, culinary experiences. They reconvene with students for joint dinners and evenings.
Beatrice Mognon
Beatrice Mognon is the Founder and Director of Fondamenta Institute and instructor of the Italian Art & Culture Program.
She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Architecture from Università IUAV di Venezia, graduating with honors and pursuing studies and research in Paris and Bucharest. She later joined Columbia University’s doctoral program in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, specializing in Renaissance and Baroque architecture and earning her Master of Arts and Master of Philosophy degrees.
Beatrice founded Fondamenta Institute to bring together European and American educational traditions, drawing on her international academic background and teaching experience at Columbia University. Through the Institute’s programs, she integrates these perspectives to offer students a distinctive educational experience that responds to the evolving needs of today’s young learners.
Inquire
Spring 2027 enrollment is open
Places are limited and admission is by application. Write to us to learn more about the program and tuition.