The 1920’s and 1930’s Harlem Renaissance was an explosion of African-American poetry, music and art. Jacob Lawrence lived and created his art at the center of it in New York city’s Harlem neighborhood. According to Whitney Museum of American Art, he painted what he saw and later became interested in African-American history and culture and chronicled lives of famous people like Harriet Tubman. Below you will discover clips of music from the Harlem Renaissance and resources about Jacob Lawrence that you can bring into the classroom.

Great resources on Jacob Lawrence:

Show your students how the arts are interconnected with samples of music, art & writing from the amazing Harlem Renaissance period.

Trouble viewing the YouTube video above? Bypass the YouTube Block could help.

I am a big fan of Google Earth and look for every opportunity to incorporate it into my teaching. So, I created a Georgia O’Keeffe Google Earth file to help illustrate how the locations where she lived impacted her work.  I also try and discuss the major changes in transportation technology that occurred during Georgia’s 98 year life (ultimately impacting her mobility between New York and New Mexico).

Interact with the O’Keeffe Google Earth file below and download here to save for use in your classroom studies.

The second resource I use is a song by Greg Percy called “Georgia”. To listen, click the audio MP3 button below.
Georgia

The first verse makes a direct connection to the geography that Georgia covered during her lifetime:

Do you use Google Earth, art songs, or other resources to teach art history?

We were excited to view The Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing at the educator open house. The new edition designed by Renzo Piano makes the Art Institute of Chicago the second largest art museum in the United States. The layout and design of the new galleries that now house the museums 20th and 21st century art collections are impressive but, as educators we were truly amazed by the new Ryan Education Center.

The new eduction space boasts five classrooms, three huge studios, the new Crown Family Education Center and the new David and Marilyn Fatt Vitale Family Orientation Room. Not only are these educational spaces truly state of the art but, have one of the most sought after views in the city as they look onto Millennium Park. The image above was taken on my phone in one of the new studios.

Along with the fantastic educational space , The Art Institute previewed new interactive software and resources featuring pieces from their collections.  This July they lunched that material online in an interactive website for kids called the Curious Corner. The site is geared more towards the elementary age child but, also has resources for educators and parents. Visitors can choose form three different categories of interactive games such as Story Time, Match Up and Play with Art. The Match up section is one of our favorites it lets you match texture, shape or sound. Below is a short clip of some of the interactive games children can explore on the site.

(Trouble viewing this video? Try this link.)

Below is a couple of ideas for utilizing the Curious Corner in the classroom.

• Use the “Story Time” games as an introduction to teaching children about the messages, stories and meaning behind many pieces of art.
• Use the “Match Up” sound game as an individual activity for analyzing the parts of a work of art. As a student matches each sound to different area of a piece of art they will notice new details and better understand what is happening in the image.
• Use the Cornell Box section of the “Play with Art” game to have students create a still life that is meaningful to themselves. Print the completed computer still life images and have students use the grid drawing processes to enlarge the image. Choose a media such as colored pencil or chalk for students to add detail to their personal still life drawings.
• Use the “Match Up” game as an introduction or extension activity for concepts like texture and shape.

Share how you could utilize this site in your classroom in the comments section below?

After taking a six week online course in Multiple Intelligence theory in the classroom offered through PBS Teacherline, I designed a lesson about the artwork of Pablo Picasso that would engage my diverse learners through their multiple intelligences.
I set up six centers in the art room for students to rotate through. Prior to our first day of this Picasso Carnival, students watched an intro movie, shown below, to give them an overview of each center.

Intro to our Picasso Carnival from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Center One: Pin the Feature on the Face (Kinesthetic)
In this center students take turns blindfolding themselves and pinning a feature of the face onto a blank head. This will result in a portrait with randomly placed features much like the look of Pablo Picasso’s cubistic portraits.

Center Two: Mr. Picassohead (logical, visual, and interpersonal)
In this center, students use the online game, http://www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html
to virtually design a Picasso-styled portrait. Students are to work collaboratively, read through the posted instructions together, take turns, and make group decisions to create one final design. This design can then be save with a screenshot (apple shift 3) to the desktop. This center will be set up on the classroom’s interactive whiteboard.

Center Three: The Picasso Polka  (Musical, linguistic, interpersonal)
In this center, students will listen to the Picasso Polka Song by Greg Percy individually on iPods while reading the lyrics. Then they will discuss and interpret the meaning of the lyrics with the group.

  
Center Four:  Art Critics (interpersonal, linguistic, visual)
In this center students evaluate the cubistic styled Picasso painting called, Girl Before a Mirror. They read these questions and discuss as a group their responses.
1.What colors did Picasso use?
2.Are they bold, faded, mixed, or pure?
3.Look at one color. Does the color show up more than once?
4.Is each color balanced throughout the composition?
5.What shapes do you see?
6.Do the shapes repeat?
7.What line patterns do you see?
8.Do the line patterns repeat?
9.Can you find the face and the reflection of the face?
10.Is it Realistic (looking real) or Abstract (not looking real)?

 
Center Five: The Grouping Group (logical/mathematical)
In this center students will categorize 65 small printed images of different pieces of art by Pablo Picasso. The instructions will ask students to group the images according to different criteria, first being Abstract (not trying to look real) vs Realistic (trying to look real). If time allows, students can then pull out images and sort them into another group for those created during the Blue Period (sad looking, painted in mostly blue hues) vs cubistic (scrambled up with multiple views of objects all at once).

Center Six: Playing the Blues (Kinesthetic and Intrapersonal)
In this center, students take turns becoming the Old Guitarist, the title and subject of a Picasso’s paintings created during his blue period.
They put on a blue sweatshirt and sit cross-legged on a blue blanket and hold a guitar (a made a guitar out of foam core scaled to their body size). One group member uses a flip video camera to videotape while the other holds up the “cue card” for the actor. The actor reads, “I am the old guitarist. Pablo Picasso painted me when he was feeling sad. The last time I was playing the blues was when…” At this point the actor fills in the blank with a personal story. Then the students can switch roles if there is time.

The art room is a perfect place to reach all learners, not just the visual/spatial. So far my students have wowed me with their enthusiasm for this interactive learning experience. My role during this time is more of an eavesdropper spying on some excellent learning. Below is a video reflection on the use of Multiple Intelligence theory in my art room.

MI Class Reflection from Tricia Fuglestad on Vimeo.

Teaching Palette guest blogger: Tricia Fuglestad
Dryden Elementary Art Teacher
Arlington Heights, IL

Brooklyn Bridge, 1899

Brooklyn Bridge, 2007

Photography is one of my favorite forms of artistic expression. In addition to artistic merit, I am particularly interested in photographs that document life from long ago.

Compare the photo found on Histografica of the Brooklyn Bridge from 1899 to a recent image photographed in 2007. Almost the same point of view, yet a completely different scene.
Add an additional element to the scene – pop culture. Use the widgets below to listen to popular music from each of these eras.

Possible Discussion Questions:

1. How has this scene changed over the last 100 years?
2. How has photography changed over the last 100 years?
3. What type of person traveled the Brooklyn Bridge in each scene? How were lives different? The same? How might social interactions be different?
4. Listen to popular music from each era (preview songs to determine if appropriate for your students). How does this help you understand time and place? Does the music make you feel any different about the images? What if you played music from the 1899 with the photograph from 2007, does it fit?

Image Source:Didjshop.com

Discussion Questions:

1.  What kind of sound did you expect to hear?  Why?

2.  How is this instrument like other instruments you are familiar with? Can you think of an another instrument that was created by a visual artist? Do you think changing the shape of the didgeridoo would change the sound?

3.  Why do you think the Indigenous Australians created this musical instrument?

Henri Rousseau, Tropical Forest with Monkeys, 1910

Bring your students into a Rousseau Jungle. Although he never visited a jungle during his lifetime, Rousseau might have enjoyed using his auditory senses to create his work.  Use the sounds of nature to enhance the learning experience.

Image Source:  National Gallery of Art 

Use the detail images below to identify animals and sounds in the jungle.

Black and White Colobus | Black Mamba | Tamarin | Howler 

Discussion Questions:

1.  Pretend you are sitting in this jungle.  What kind of sounds would you hear?

2.  What kind of animals do you see in the painting? Can you hear any of these animals in the nature sounds played?  Do you hear any other sounds that you can’t see in the painting? Do you think those animals might be there?

Unfinished George Washington by Stuart (appears on $1 bill)

You may not realize it, but you see a portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart practically every day. His George Washington portrait has appeared on the U.S. one-dollar bill for more than 100 years! He’s probably the most famous portraitist of the American Revolution with a portfolio that includes most of the Founding Fathers – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, etc.

According to Wikipedia, his works can be found today at art museums throughout the United States and Great Britain, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

According to the National Gallery of Art, because he portrayed virtually all the notable men and women of the Federal period in the United States, Gilbert Stuart was declared the “Father of American Portraiture” by his contemporaries.

Famous portraits by Stuart - Washington, Adams, Jefferson

To integrate music, below are mp3 clips from the album “Music of the American Revolution: The Birth of Liberty.” According to the New World Records website, this album “is a scholarly and well-programmed musical recreation of a defining moment in the nation’s history, mixing propaganda songs, psalmody, fife-and-drum music, and wind band music, the four types of music most prevalent and popular at the time.”

“The pieces on this disc have been chosen to illustrate some of the different kinds of music sung and played in the Colonies around the time of the Revolution. Sources for the music and texts of the pieces recorded are original wherever possible. No attempt has been made to recapture the untutored roughness with which much of the music was surely performed in its time. Rather, the goal has been to record polished performances by skilled singers and players,” reads the liner notes of the album.

If you’re planning to teach a lesson on portraits, consider referencing Gilbert Stuart. For added resource, below is a presentation by Martin Kalfatovic, a libraries coordinator and head of new media at the Smithsonian.

Image: Edgar Degas, "The Star", 1879/81

When discussing Degas and Impressionism I use classical music – preferably classical ballet – to set the mood. Here is some classical and classical ballet music to try:

                                                                                                                 Source: The Art Institute of Chicago

Discussion Questions:

1. Does hearing the music change any impressions about the work of art?

2. How might the scene change with each piece of music? How might the dance moves change? Would there be a change in costume?

New York visual artists take the painting process traditionally reserved for studios or art schools and make it public with Art Battles, which are events that meld music and painting into a competition decided by public opinion. Check out the promo video below as well as the art battle event Femme Fatale below.

Does this inspire any classroom art activities?

(Trouble viewing video? Try this link.)

Femme Fatale from Art Battles on Vimeo.