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Unit 1
“Invention and Change”
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Additional Resources:
- Go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Director’s Choice: Storm King on the Hudson” to hear Smithsonian American Art Museum Director Elizabeth Broun speak about the Colman painting.
- Visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Have a Question?” or a biography of Samuel Colman and a biography of Hans Hofmann.
- Go to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website for a collection of Hans Hoffmann’s papers covering the years ca. 1904–1978 (bulk 1945–1965) concerning his teaching and exhibitions.
- For an exhibition that the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History plans for 2008, all fifty states and three territories will showcase soil types from their respective locales. Students could each bring in a soil sample from the area near where they live and compare the color, quality, and texture of the soils. Do they see any significant changes from one neighborhood to the next?
- Ask students to read Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which takes place in the lower Hudson River Valley in New York State. In what way does Colman’s painting capture some of the “drowsy, dreamy” atmosphere of the valley that Irving portrays in his story?
“The Challenge of Illness”
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Additional Resources:
- To learn more about different ways people with disabilities have faced challenges in sports, go to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History online exhibition “Sports: Breaking Records, Breaking Barriers” and use the “Barrier Removers” feature.
- Visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Director’s Choice” To hear Smithsonian American Art Museum Director Elizabeth Broun share her thoughts about Francisco’s The Sick Child.
- To learn more about medical inventions and their inventors, go to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation’s website feature “Resources” and click on “Medicine and Health.”
Unit 3
“Embracing Family, Friends, and Neighbors”
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Additional Resources:
- Franz Kline pays tribute to a great choreographer in Merce C. Ask students to choose a family member of someone who has made a positive contribution to their lives, and create a tribute to that person in a chosen media. They could create a collage of pictures, or even take a more abstract approach and use just one color of paint on a blank sheet and the dramatic movement of the brush to capture who the person is.
- For photographs and painted portraits of Merce Cunningham, look at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Catalogue of American Portraits Portrait Search. Click on “Biographical Search” and then type in “Merce Cunningham” for a list of images.
- Students can play a game that uses art terms and artists’ names based on Bojorquez’s painting. See the online activity at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s feature “100 Days & Nights of American Art.”
Unit 4
“Acknowledging the Past, Reaching for the Future”
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Additional Resources:
Unit 5
“Everyday Obstacles, Everyday Courage”
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Additional Resources:
- For a biography of Michael Olszewski, go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Have a Question?”
- For a biography of Daniel Chester French, visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Have a Question?
- In Speaking to Hear, artist Michael Olszewski explores the difficulties people face when they try to communicate, especially when they disagree. Ask students to explore two sides of an issue that has no right or wrong answer, such as whether or not people should eat only grown locally foods or be able to buy food imported from other countries. Have students form two groups to argue for and against the issue. Then have each group present its argument to the class.
“Capturing Cosmic Beauty”
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Additional Resources:
- Go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s website feature “Education: Classroom Resources” for Teaching Resources. Click on “Exploring the Universe Teaching Packet” and/or “Exploring the Planets Teaching Poster.”
- For a transcript of a 1959 interview with artists Charles Birchfield, visit the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website.
- For a collection of Alma Thomas papers, photographs, writings, and printed pieces from 1946–1975, go to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website.
- For more about Alma Thomas and related visual analysis activities, go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature, “Bottlecaps to Brushes”.
- Students can imitate Alma Thomas’s colorful The Eclipse by creating mosaics of their own using colored paper. Ask them to look at the sky and think about what might be beyond the clouds and stars. Have them make a mosaic of colored paper that captures what they imagine.
- For more about Charles Burchfield, visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Speaking of Pictures”.
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