Seeing American History Through the Artist's Eye: A Teaching and Learning Resource

The Education department at the University of Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery has just launched a new web feature which pairs works of art with teaching strategies.  

Their new teaching / learning site, Seeing America,  documents the Gallery's outstanding collection of American Art through 82 works and their connections to American history, culture, literature and politics.

The accompanying Classroom Guide integrates background information on the art, the artist and America with visual literacy classroom activities. Lesson plans and resources are readable online and available as downloadable pdfs. 

Download a pdf sample Context and Classroom Activities for
 Thomas Hart Benton’s Boomtown. (above)

After you've had a chance to view the site leave a comment with your responses. I'll pass them along to my friends at the Education department.  

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If your interested in world art, take a look at my blog post "Picturing the Story - An Interdisciplinary Approach to Culture, Environment, Language, and Learning."  I served as an advisor to the Education department's last teaching site - "Picturing the Story: Narrative Arts and the Stories They Tell." It uses world art from the permanent collection of the Memorial Art Gallery dating from 1500 BCE to the 20th Century. Each work has a story to tell, either visually through imagery and symbol, or indirectly through custom and ritual. The stories reflect sacred beliefs, folk traditions, common human experiences, or unique cultural practices. 

Comments

[Suzanne]

Mark Bower, Pat Martin, Suzanne at the learning lab. Mark asked how you were, so we pulled up your blog. Mark wants you to know he's in awe of your blog and he wants you to know that he finds it quite sickening that you know and can do just about anything. He says he absolutely loves all your tech knowledge! Hope all is well.

[Peter Pappas]

Great to hear from the Rochester gang. Glad you like the blog. Not so sure I'm that much of a techie. (I rarely go "under the hood.") But I sure have fun figuring out cool stuff to do with it!