Art Teacher Resources

Here is a compilation of some of my favorite online resources for finding lesson plans, art ideas and images from amazing museums and art organizations. I am constantly searching and seeking out content for my students and have put all the links in one place. There is a permanent link on the RESOURCES part of this website. If you have a favorite website that has great online resources for art education, please post in a comment and we can add it to the list.
 The * denotes text taken from the website description
   

MUSEUMS

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

New York, New York

http://madmuseum.org/learn/resource-materials

The MAD has over a dozen downloadable Teacher Resource Packets that focus on a range of topics and grade levels based on their exhibitions. The MAD is one of my favorite museums in NYC and focuses on the ways artists and designers transform the world around us in an intimate environment.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York, New York

http://www.metmuseum.org/learn/for-educators

The Met has workshops and events for those who live in the area and offers online, print, and other resources in its educators section of their website.

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

New York, New York

http://dx.cooperhewitt.org/lesson-plans/#

Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. The Museum presents compelling perspectives on the impact of design on daily life through active educational and curatorial programming.*

Guggenheim Museum

New York, New York

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/education/school-educator-programs/teacher-resources

The Education Department provides materials for teachers to help prepare students for museum visits and to assist educators in developing classroom lessons. Online resources include Exhibition Resource Units, a database of inquiry plans, and descriptions of curriculum-related art projects.*

Museum of Modern Art

New York, New York

http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning

MOMA offers free resources and comprehensive lesson plans by subject, theme or medium around the museums modern and contemporary art collections and special exhibitions.

Whitney Museum of American Art

New York, New York

http://whitney.org/Education/ForTeachers

The Whitney is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art and provides teacher guides, activities and tips around exhibitions at the museum.*

The Frick Collection

New York, New York

http://www.frick.org/interact/lectures

The Frick Collection includes masterpieces of European painting, major works of sculpture (among them one of the finest groups of small bronzes in the world), superb eighteenth-century French furniture and porcelains, Old Master and nineteenth-century works on paper, Limoges enamels, porcelains, and other works of remarkable quality. Offers online lectures, virtual tours and videos that explore the collection.*

The Dali Museum

St. Petersburg Florida

http://www.thedali.org/education/resources.php

Offers a downloadable teachers guide, which includes painting descriptions of key works from the collection, a biography of the artist and Dali Museum information as well as a resource list, educational opportunities for students and school tour information.* Additionally, it has a dozen detailed lesson plans and images you can download. 
Also check out the http://www.salvador-dali.org/museus/figueres/en_index.html

The Dalí Theatre-Museum, the largest surrealistic object in the world, occupies the building of the former Municipal Theatre, a 19th century construction that was destroyed at the end of the Spanish Civil War. On its ruins, Dalí decided to create his museum.* 

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philadelphia, PA

http://www.philamuseum.org/education/resources.html

The museum offers online resources; detailed lesson plans, teaching kits and great visuals for the classroom. The museum exhibits works from the Middle Ages to the Modern period with frequent special exhibitions.*

Museum of Fine Arts

Boston, MA

http://www.mfa.org/programs

The MFA has comprehensive art collections and is renowned for its Impressionist paintings, Asian and Egyptian collections and early American art.

For educators they offer online resources that include activities and videos about current and special exhibitions.*

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

San Diego, CA

http://www.mcasd.org/learn/educators/classroom-resources

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present. The Museum’s Education Department offers a variety of standards-based lesson plans that can be adapted for various grade levels and subjects, utilize inexpensive materials, and promote class dialogue regarding contemporary artists and the culture of our time.*

The Jewish Museum

New York, New York

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/ResourcesforEducators

Online resources and downloadable curriculum materials on a variety of themes around Judaism and artifacts developed by Jewish Museum Educators in consultation with the Museum's Curators.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Washington D.C.

http://www.ushmm.org/educators

The Museum is a living memorial to the Holocaust, inspiring citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred and prevent genocide.* They have online resources that offer lesson plans, guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust and online workshops.

National Museum of the U.S. AirForce

Dayton, Ohio

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/education/index.asp

For fans of aviation this is the world's largest and oldest military aviation museum. They have virtual tours and offer downloadable resource guides like a WWI aircraft presentation and aircraft mission symbols guides.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Springfield, IL

http://www.illinois.gov/alplm/museum/Learning/Pages/Resource-Guides.aspx

You can learn through online artifacts and documents here http://www.illinois.gov/alplm/museum/Learning/Pages/Artifacts.aspx

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum brings to life Abraham Lincoln’s story through immersive exhibits and displays of original artifacts.*

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Tucson, Arizona

http://www.desertmuseumdigitallibrary.org/public/index.php

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum's Digital Library includes a catalog of images, narrative, and scientific nomenclature of plants, animals, minerals, and biotic communities of the Sonoran Desert region. This constantly expanding catalog currently features 17471 images.*

 

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, IL

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Modern/lesson

The lesson plans from The Art Institute of Chicago have been designed to help teachers plan classroom activities that will enhance their students’ understanding of objects in the Art Institute of Chicago. It features a collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in its permanent collection.*

The Getty

Los Angeles, CA

http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/contemporary_art/lesson_plan_index.html

Art lessons and a video gallery for grades 3–12 are designed to help teacher’s prompt classroom discussion and learning centered on contemporary art at the Getty Center.* They offer a variety of lessons in a range of disciplines in an easily searchable database.

National Gallery of Art

Washington, D.C. 

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/education/teachers.html

The NGA is one of the finest collections in the world illustrating major achievements in painting, sculpture, and graphic arts from the Renaissance to the present day. Borrow free-loan teaching packets and DVDs or access online lessons to bring art to your classroom, home, non-profit TV station, or other learning setting. All materials are free.*

Newseum

Washington D.C.

http://www.newseum.org/education/index.html

Newseum Blends High-Tech With Historical

One of the top attractions in Washington, D.C., the Newseum's 250,000-square-foot news museum offers visitors a state-of-the-art experience that blends news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.*

ART CENTERS and ORGANIZATIONS

Studio in a School
New York, New York
http://www.artblueprint.org/
This website offers free, detailed lesson plans based on the New York City Blueprint for The Arts, which is a comprehensive guide that highlights benchmarks in The Arts across the disciplines. Great resource with excellent, well-written art lessons.

The Contemporary Arts Center

Cincinnati, Ohio

http://contemporaryartscenter.org/learn/resources

The Contemporary Arts Center provides the opportunity for all people to discover the dynamic relationship between art and life by exhibiting, but not collecting, the work of progressive artists. It will continually increase its regional, national and international influence by providing changing visual and interactive experiences that challenge, entertain and educate.*

Arts Edge, The Kennedy Center

Washington D.C.

https://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators.aspx

A web site for teaching and learning in The Arts that has a variety of Arts-centered, standards-based resources aligned with national art education standards.

https://www.pbs.org/art21/education/onlinelessonlibrary.html

The Online Lesson Library (Seasons 1-3) is a doorway to curricular resources presenting contemporary art and artists for the classroom, hosting a wide range of thematic lesson plans for Visual and Performing Arts, Language Arts, and Social Studies curricula.*

Art21

http://www.art21.org/teach

Over the past decade, Art21 has established itself as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary art and artists through its Peabody Award-winning biennial television series, "Art in the Twenty-First Century." The nonprofit organization has used the power of digital media to introduce millions of people of all ages to contemporary art and artists and has created a new paradigm for teaching and learning about the creative process.*

Incredible Art Department

http://www.incredibleart.org/

You can find hundreds of lessons here ranging from preschool to the college level. You can submit lessons and search by grade level or subject with contributions from around the globe. Lots to search through–some lessons are great while others can be lean towards craft projects and are not so well-written.

Contemporary Artists for Inspiration, Art Center of South Florida

In the middle of the frenzied promenade on Lincoln Road in SoBe Miami lies the Art Center of South Florida that offers classes, studios and residencies for Contemporary Artists. Every first Saturday they have open studios where you can discover emerging and established Contemporary Artists. To learn more about the residency program, which has three application deadlines per year, click here.

There were three very different artists whose work I enjoyed and want to share that can easily be introduced in art lessons and the classroom. These artists-in-residence evoke the often taught works of Edward Hopper, David Hockney’s collages and Andy Warhol’s pop art. I think it is important to enhance the teaching of representative artists of their respective movements by exposing students to living, breathing artists that have talent and an engaging aesthetic. Keep your lessons fresh and mix it up; there is a world of practicing artists waiting to be recognized and discovered that are worthy of our attention. Check out these artists and see how they may tie in to your curriculum.

In Search of French Broad Sweets
Oil on Canvas, 60"H x 72"W
This is a scene from Asheville, North Carolina
by John Sanchez

John Sanchez is a talented American artist originally from New Jersey who draws and paints scenes of everyday life like parking lots, interiors of markets and cars on the road (to name a few) in dark umbers and siennas with contrasting light that creates a dramatic effect. His technique has expressionistic strokes with a realistic aesthetic that captures the fleeting moments in life with depth and subtle detail. His artwork can be connected to themes like documenting scenes in everyday life that capture transit and automobiles, travel and landscape, which are all relevant when teaching perspective, various painting techniques and how to use color to a create mood in a composition.

Tom Cocotos’s collage work is unique, beautifully executed and intriguing with its materials and subject matter. I love mixed media and collage work and it isn’t easy to successfully integrate materials and develop an original aesthetic and Mr. Cocotos exceeds with his masterful use of white space that poetically balances his compositions. He does a lot of commission work that involves portraiture and some of his portraits incorporate text that pertains to the person and creates subtle meaning in his work. His recent collages are inspired by the bees that flit about (and unfortunately die) in his studio space in Miami and he is intrigued by the complicated insects that are fuzzy, intricate and strong yet delicate at the same time, like much of his artwork. He incorporates carefully torn pieces of paper and found objects into his bee subjects that lends to abstraction and can be associated to collage artists who have left their mark like Kurt Schwitters, David Hockney and Joseph Cornell. Mr. Cocotos’s collage works have valuable teaching points and could inspire an art lesson that integrates the study of nature and insects with collage techniques that explore materials.

WI-FI in the Afterlife Jim Morrison
Acrylic & Transfer on Wood
47"H x 36"W
by Alejandro Vigilante

Finally, another contemporary artist that is revisualizing the theme of pop art is Alejandro Vigilante. He is a Miami-based multimedia painter who is in the process of developing a new strain of Neo-Pop art, loosely titled "i-Pop" or sometimes referred to as "iArt", as stated on his website. His artwork can be linked to technology and social media and pop culture icons that transcend time. He appropriates images that are saturated with color and have a pixel-like composition that mimics the technology he is borrowing from. Instead of just teaching about Andy Warhol when it comes to Pop Art and iconic images, check out Mr. Vigilante’s creations that take the theme further with today’s social media buzzwords and formats. There are many disciplines Mr. Vigilante’s work can be linked to like learning image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, the history of Pop Art, and the ins and outs of Copyright Law and Creative Commons Use.

Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture and Cuisine at Art Institute of Chicago

Food and art enthusiasts should be excited for the exhibition that showcases food in American Painting that spans 1750-1965, which is on display until January 27th, 2014 in the Windy City. I wrote about food as the subject of painting for my grade 6 students not too long ago and created my own presentation here. Food is a great way to connect with students and drawing and painting food reinforces so many fundamental art skills I teach that include: how to draw volume, perspective, color theory and how to create an overall composition that has a focal point. Click here to see some of the final paintings my former grade 6 students created with tempera paint on canvas panels.

Lime and Coconut by Monica Hopenwasser

Sometimes when I feel like I am in an creative rut, I return to subjects I love (or hate, depending on my mood) to focus on my skills, rather than the concept or idea for the painting/drawing. I am a foodie and food is accessible, comforting and something I always go back to when I just need to draw and practice observation.

        

If you can't make it to Chicago, you can own the book that accompanies the exhibition, which I found at Barnes and Noble while holiday shopping and I was excited at the compilation of both well-known and some lesser known artists that I can share in my presentation when I teach this project. One criticism I have is that I wish the exhibition included more recent works and emerging talent from the past twenty years, instead of ending with the 1960s. With current trends of farm to table eating habits, banning of trans fats, and vegan and gluten free living, it would be interesting to see how artists today depict foods that reflect recent American culture, politics and economies and showcase more contemporary artists. 

 
Check out the links below to read reviews and learn more about the exhibition.
Art Institute of Chicago
Wall Street Journal Online
Chicago Reader
Chicagoist

ABC Local News Video

Mixed Media Collage Inspired by Music

Music is a powerful way to convey emotion, tell a story or create an imaginary world that transports us to another place. I love to integrate music into the art making process in variety of ways. Whether it serves as a backdrop to create a mood in the classroom or the song itself is used to inspire a painting or drawing; music touches us all and is a great way to connect with students of all ages. Music can reveal feelings and emotions that are sometimes difficult to put into words and capture poetic sentiments that paint a picture. Teens go through so many changes and face a lot of pressure socially, academically and sometimes struggle to find their identity or express who they are inside. This collage project is conceptual and personal and a great way to evoke personal expression. Students choose a song (it can be a poem or story too) that they want to depict in a 2-D collage that integrates text and image to create a final, unified artwork. This project is a great way to get to know your students on a more intimate level and can reveal much about what is going on inside that student. This project is challenging because not only do they have to integrate text into their composition they have to choose materials wisely and use the elements of art to make connections between their components.  

The basic steps for this project are:

• Students pick a song (it can be a poem or story too) that they are connected to in some way. The song should not be offensive or contain explicit lyrics. Use your discretion as a teacher for what is appropriate depending on your setting. 
• Next, have students print out and write about the lyrics they choose in their sketchbook. Some thought provoking/brainstorming questions to get the creative juices flowing include:
• Who or what is the song about?
• What do you associate with this genre of music?
• What images come to mind when you read the words to this song?
• What images come to mind when you hear the music/melody to this song?
• What is the artist/song trying to convey?
• What mood is created by this song/music?
• What colors come to mind when you hear this song?
• What kind of marks/lines/shapes do you associate when you hear this song?
• Why do you like this song?
• How can you use color to capture the emotion in the song?
• What story does this song tell? 

Now, students can begin to storyboard, draw pictures, and collect images to start the project. Here is a must have for starting the project–Students must create an original substrate or background to jump start their collage. This means they create a background that has color(s), texture(s), and/or shapes instead of just starting with a white piece of paper for the background. This is a whole little mini project in itself and forces students to create something that relates to the song but is abstract or more of a design that they will build on for their collage. 

I like to work along side students to demonstrate the steps and process and emphasize how to integrate the elements, blur edges and layer the images and text. The computer can be a great way to print text and create unique images using image editing software. Below are some examples of high school Studio Art 1 students who completed the project. 

"Mad as Rabbits” song by Panic! at the Disco

“Your Time Has Come” song by Audioslave

"Pocketful Of Sunshine" song by Natasha Bedingfield

“Marvelous Things” song by Eisley

 

 

 

Professional Development at Museum of Arts and Design, Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital

I attended an amazing professional development for educators that celebrated the new exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) titled Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital. It was a day packed with a lot of activity with an artist talk and tour and two fun and informative workshops that related to the exhibition. I would love to take some students on a tour via ArtEsteem, so please contact me if you want to arrange a group visit. The expansive exhibition covers three floors and showcases a variety of 21st-century artist creations that utilize advanced methods of computer-assisted production known as digital fabrication in their artwork. Think 3-D printing, laser cutting, and digital knitting.

Artist Talk

Alissia Melka-Teichroew started the morning with an inspiring artist talk and presented her story and artwork. She is a New York-based industrial designer who is featured in Out of Hand that exhibits her jointed jewels that use 3-D printing. She grew up in the Netherlands and talked about how her culture and environment had a huge impact on how she thinks about design. She described the Netherlands as being very efficient in design and how they plan everything from how they design and organize their tax forms and money to architecture and bikes ... she emphasized how the Dutch really plan everything to maximize use and aesthetic with funny quips and photos that accompanied her presentation. I really liked her approach to her design process where she stated that she "thinks from a story, not a material." The story is what drives her creations and the making and fabricating comes after ... "So the material needs to enhance, strengthen the story I am trying to tell through design."

Alissia Melka-Teichroew, New York based Industrial Designer

Alissia shared some of her projects and I especially liked her clever and playful Tiffany inspired Diamond Sterling Silver Ring, which is emblematic of love and marriage. She takes the classic style and silhouette and puts her spin on it by slicing it (with no real diamond) and making it out of an unconventional material like acrylic or sterling silver thus making it modern and edgy. It tells a story about our obsession with jewelery and status and the idea is that you can buy as many as you want because her rings are inexpensive.

She also created collections of Jointed Jewels that combine the old with the new that conjures up images of the plastic Pop-It Beads from the 1950s. Alissia puts a modern twist on this idea and utilizes 3-D printing to manufacture the pieces. Although they are jointed like ball joints, the jewelry is actually made in one-piece and not assembled. Another design challenge she presented to herself using digital fabrication was how small can you make something wearable without breaking it utilizing the 3-D printing process.


Exhibition
The exhibition Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital has something for everyone and does a beautiful job showcasing the work and describing the processes the artists used to generate their creations. We toured the exhibition and collected raw data about the work by choosing a theme and writing down our observations in regards to the theme we choose. Observing the art and collecting information in regards to comparative themes is a great activity for adults and students and something I will definitely incorporate into future lessons. It allows you to analyze the work and form important questions about what you are looking at and how it can be used or viewed. Some theme examples included: Figurative vs Non-Figurative, Art vs Design, Synthetic vs Natural, Functional vs Non-functional, and Digital vs Non-digital

 Below are are a few highlights from the show.

Nervous System, Hyphae Pendant Lamps, 2013, Nylon, LED lights

I love these modern, organic lights that blur the lines between art and design, as well as synthetic vs natural from the duo known as Nervous System. The patterns they project on the wall are almost as powerful as the fabrication of the lights themselves. Science meets art meets nature meets technology in these digitally fabricated works. Nervous System also makes affordable cool jewelry and art objects inspired by science and nature that are generated by technology. Check out their website here and learn more about them.

Clone Chair, Julian Mayor

Original Queen Anne side chair

Juilan Mayor is a designer based in East London who created a replica of the Queen Anne side chair and used the original chairs "DNA" to create a laser cut plywood chair made of vertical pieces of wood. I like idea of replicating an object and putting a modern twist on it and creating something new from the old by transforming the process and/or materials.

Untitled, 2008, Concrete, pigment, Anish Kapoor

When I first saw these works I thought they were handmade out of clay ... but this is a digital fabrication show, and to learn about how they were made and the concept behind the work was an aha moment. I was amazed how the fabrication process mimics nature and it is almost impossible to tell the difference between handmade and made by machine.

Untitled, 2008, Concrete, pigment, Anish Kapoor (wall piece)

“The hand of the artist is much estimated as the means by which the expression of art finds a voice. To make art without a hand is a goal that sets art beyond expression. Artists have found ways to subvert the means of production. Some three years ago, Adam Lowe and I wondered if it were possible to make a machine that could generate form. The printing machine formed a model for the basis of our thinking. After much trial and error, we found a surprisingly simple way of making a workable engine. Once we started making objects, a new reality began to emerge. These objects were like no others; they seemed to obscure the border between artifice and event. These are objects more akin to natural things than those made by design."

           – Anish Kapoor

Hands-on Workshops

Finally, we educators had the opportunity to make our own objects and learn more about 3-D printing. The company Solidoodle has partnered with MAD during this exhibition and demonstrated the 3-D printing process and software needed to produce small objects that range in the 6 x 6 inch range. They are based in Brooklyn and you can learn more about them here. We learned about creating an original model or finding one online, how to convert the model into something (code!) that the printer can understand and then how the printer melts and uses a filament to produce a plastic model. Another cool resource to learn more about models and 3-D printing is at the website Thingiverse that features model collections that allow you to explore and create your won 3-D objects. The printers we used in the workshop run about $600.00 (not bad!).

 

 

 The second workshop was hands-on and used craft materials like straws, cardboard, colored wire, scissors and tape to make sculptures that reflected strange statistics (like you blink over 10,000,000 times a year or a dragonfly’s first six months of life are spent underwater.) that may or may not be true. This is a great activity to do with students that could generate a worthy discussion about fact finding and what makes a reliable resource on the Internet.  This workshop correlated to the artist talk early in the day, where we had to tell a story about the statistic, then incorporate the materials we had on hand. It forced us to tell a story and the materials were secondary in the process.

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A New Creative Challenge from Scholastic: The Gedenk Award for Tolerance

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards is a great way for students to put their work out in the public sphere and earn recognition for their talents. I have had many students receive honors from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards over the years and I am impressed with their commitment to The Arts. This year scholastic announced announced a new creative challenge around an issue that is close to my heart, Genocide and The Holocaust. 

From Scholastic:
The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers has partnered with the Gedenk Movement to present a special creative challenge for the 2014 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The Gedenk Award for Tolerance asks students to create original works of art or writing that demonstrate their role in cultivating tolerance.

Five top works will receive National Medals and academic awards of $1,000 each for work addressing the Gedenk Movement's important message and mission.

Submissions should reflect upon lessons learned from the Holocaust and other genocides, and attempt to raise awareness of the importance of increasing tolerance to safeguard a peaceful society.

Work may be submitted within any of the Awards' categories of art or writing, via the Awards' online registration system. For more information about this special award, visit www.artandwriting.org/gedenk, and check out our partners at the Gedenk Movement at www.gedenkmovement.org.