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“Technology’s Impact on the Senses”
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Additional Resources:
- Visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Director’s Choice” to hear museum director Elizabeth Broun’s views on Theodore Roszak’s Recording Sound. Broun cites the following quotation from Roszak: “What could the artist do to enhance life, not socially and politically, but generally, for all men [and women] living under an industrial kind of civilization?” Using this comment as a starting point, have students discuss the role art can and should play in society.
- Technology changes so fast that some objects, such as the phonograph in Roszak’s Recording Sound, can become dated or even obsolete in one generation. Using the information on the Smithsonian Education’s website feature “From Carbons to Computers: The Changing American Office”, have students compile a timeline of objects. Some sample objects include:
- paperclip (1900)
- electric typewriter (1902)
- spiral notebook (1924)
- first rotary dial desk phone (1949)
- first commercially available computer (1951)
- first commercially available copier (1959)
- Ask students which objects are still used today. What objects replaced the ones rarely in use today (like the electric typewriter)? To function in the workplace, workers must continually learn how to use new technology. Ask students to include some imaginative future inventions in their timelines. What do they think people will be using at work fifty years from now?
“Family Tales”
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Additional Resources:
- Artist Velino Shije Herrera celebrates the oral tradition of his Pueblo people in Story Teller. Go to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s website feature “Educational Publications” (PDF format) to download Teacher Self-Guide: Stories.
- Today, instead of myths and legends, most people share stories that they hear and see in the media. Have students choose a story from the media (TV, newspapers, magazines) and rewrite it in a style that would work well in a storytelling circle like the one in Herrera’s painting. Choose several of the students’ submissions to share with the class. Have the class sit in a circle as the student stands in the center and reads his or her story aloud. For more resources on storytelling, see the Smithsonian Discovery Theater’s Guide to the “Cherokee Story Circle” (PDF format).
- Have students bring in a family photograph or picture from a magazine that shows the largest number of generations that they can find (themselves, brothers/sisters, mother/father, aunts/uncles, cousins, grandmother/grandfather). Using a KWL chart, ask students to write down what they already Know about the lives and times of the people portrayed; what they Want to know about the people, the place and time period; and what they Learn after they share the image with their teacher and the class.
“Things Communities Share”
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Additional Resources:
- Often when people leave a community, they write letters to the people they left behind. Today, many people use e-mail to stay connected over long distances, but before e-mail, families and friends had to rely on the postal service to deliver their news. On the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum’s website, there are many letters from African-American men and women who left the South for the North only to find that there weren’t always the jobs and riches that everyone had promised. By the time the Depression hit in the 1930s, many of the new arrivals were struggling. Have students go to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s website and scroll to the bottom of the page to read a letter one woman, Minnie Hardin, sent to President Roosevelt in 1935. Discuss the role of personal letters as historical resources and what e-mail has done to change that.
- Go to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art for a transcript of a 1979 interview with artist Allan Rohan Crite.
- In School’s Out, Crite shows the activities of one community revolving around a school. Have students collect family recipes that are popular in their culture and community, and compile a Classroom Cookbook. Visit the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service’s online exhibition “America by Food” for directions on how to create this project. If possible, have some students bring in sample dishes. Ask them to give an oral presentation listing the ingredients and explaining how the dish reflects their cultural heritage.
“The Power of the Sea”
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Additional Resources:
- Visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Director’s Choice” to hear museum director Elizabeth Broun’s views on Ryder’s unusual painting methods.
- In an effort to add a special glow and power to his work, the artist often used layers of oil-rich paint that didn’t always dry properly. His experiments with techniques and paints have made it difficult to preserve his work and to replicate his colors in prints.
- Go to the Smithsonian Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Lunder Conservation Center’s website feature “Interview Video Archive” and click on Jia-Sun Tsang, who works as an art conservator.
- She has a background in chemistry and believes art conservation requires the care and preparation of a surgeon. “I do not think we can restore or preserve a painting without understanding the materials,” she says. She uses a hand-held X-ray machine to determine the type of paint used in a painting. Discuss various types of paints that artists have used over time (oil, watercolor, acrylic). If possible, bring in at least two different types of paint to show the class. Ask students to apply the different paints of the same color to a sheet of paper. As a class, analyze the texture and brightness of the two samples.
- Go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Collections and Exhibitions” at http://americanart.si.edu/collections/interact/slideshow/cornell.cfm and click on “Slide Show” to view “Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination.”
- The Smithsonian Archives of American Art has an extensive collection of materials related to Cornell’s life and career. Visit for the “Joseph Cornell Papers Online”.
- Introduce students to the British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), one of the greatest sea poems in the English language. Go to the Bartleby.com site for the full text of the poem. Have students read portions of it aloud. Explore the similarities between the arrogant captain in the Flying Dutchman and the hubris of the sailor who killed a bird associated with good fortune, the Albatross, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In both tales, the men on the ships face consequences for their actions.
- Visit the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s website feature “Physical Sciences Collection: Surveying and Geodesy” to find out more about different types of compasses. Students can learn that Chinese sailors placed magnetic needles in bowls of water as far back as the fourth century. They can also study the differences between a pocket compass, a solar compass, and a surveyor’s compass.
“Fighting for Land”
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Additional Resources:
- Go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “1001 Days and Nights of American Art” to find out more about the history of barbed wire, which figures prominently in Alexandre Hogue’s Dust Bowl.
- Discuss with students how the invention of barbed wire in 1874 contributed to the poor farming practices and over-grazing of land in the Midwest that led to the disastrous Dust Bowl in the 1930s and the foreclosure of thousands of farms.
- Go to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website for photographs of James E. Allen.
- In the 1920s, more than 50 percent of Americans lived on farms. Today, fewer than 5 percent do. Introduce students to different barn designs by visiting the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service’s Teacher Guide for the traveling exhibition “Barn Again: Celebrating an American Icon”. (PDF format). Go to pages 23–24 and print some of the photographs of the various barn designs. In Allen’s and Hogue’s artwork, the barns are off in the distance and not at the center of the painting. Ask students to discuss what they think are the hallmarks of a healthy farm, including a good barn. Why do they think the artists chose to push the barns almost entirely out of their pictures?
“The Pursuit of Equality”
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Additional Resources:
- Visit the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s websitefeature “Separate is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education” and click on the “Brown v. Board of Education Timeline.”
- Ask students to choose an event from the timeline to research in greater detail and then present an oral report to the class. For example, they could choose the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which prohibits denying a person the right to vote based on their race. They could write up a profile on Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 became the first African American to play major league baseball.
- Go to the Luce Foundation Center for American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website feature “Artist Media Archive” and click on “Go” under “Meet Sam Gilliam” to watch an interview with the artist.
- Visit the Smithsonian Archives of American Art website for two transcripts of interviews with Sam Gilliam
- Go to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s website feature “Portraits of a City: The Scurlock Photographic Studio’s Legacy to Washington, D.C.” Several generations of one African-American family, which ran a professional photography studio, donated this collection of photographs to the Smithsonian. They chronicle life in the nation’s capital from an African-American perspective.
- Show some of the photographs to students. Point out the various categories: Work, In the Classroom, and Community. If possible, ask them to photograph scenes in their neighborhood that they feel capture a particular race or ethnicity. Have them share their photographs with the class and explain the stories behind some their pictures.
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