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Mary Byrne

Currently an intern with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service with Museum on Main Street. 

Mary Byrne's collections

 

Depictions of Water in American Impressionist Painting

<p>This collection explores different water scenes painted by nineteenth and twentieth century American impressionists. It looks at both technical vocabulary for art, and Impressionism as a movement. It uses multiple mediums and explores different artists over the period.</p> <p><strong>This lesson aims to:</strong><br /></p> <ul><li>Introduce students to Impressionist techniques in art, we well as specifically introduce American Impressionist painting. </li><li>Encourage discussion of the representation of water in the context of the Museum on Main Street (MoMS) exhibition <em>Water/Ways</em>. </li><li>Teach some foundational artistic concepts and vocabulary at the intermediate level to students, including: basic color theory, brushwork, expression, and mood.</li></ul><p><strong>Students should be able to:</strong> </p> <ul><li>Describe visual elements of painting with specific vocabulary. </li><li>Compare multiple paintings and artists, in terms of specific visual elements. </li><li>Compare artwork based on the representation of a specific subject: water. </li><li>[Optional Activity] Reproduce at least one technique from the following categories: color and brushwork.  <strong><br /></strong></li></ul>
Mary Byrne
18
 

Alphabet Soup: Rural America and the New Deal

<p>This lesson explores three different New Deal programs, with a specific eye towards their impact on rural America. As well, it focuses on student engagement with a variety of types of primary sources.  This lesson is designed as a self-contained class activity, which requires no supplementary teaching beyond the MoMS exhibition <em>Crossroads. </em>It is designed to be done in class following a visit to that exhibition, or within an after-school setting following a similar visit.</p> <p>Age Levels Intermediate (9 to 12 years old), Middle School (12 to 15 years old)<br /></p> <hr /><p>Why are primary sources important?</p> <ol><li>Direct engagement with artifacts and records of the past encourages deeper content exploration, active analysis, and thoughtful response.</li><li>Analysis of primary sources helps develop critical thinking skills by examining meaning, context, bias, purpose, point of view, etc.</li><li> Primary source analysis fosters learner-led inquiry as students construct knowledge by interacting with a variety of sources that represent different accounts of the past.</li><li>Students realize that history exists through interpretation that reflects the view points and biases of those doing the interpreting. </li></ol><p><strong>This lesson aims to:</strong> </p> <ul><li>Introduce students to New Deal programs that affected rural life and agriculture during the Great Depression.</li><li>Encourage discussion of the experience of those programs in the context of the Museum on Main Street (MoMS) exhibition <em>Crossroads</em>. </li><li>Help students practice using different types of sources as research material.</li></ul><p><strong>Students should be able to:</strong> </p> <ul><li>Identify different types of sources as primary and secondary sources, as well as differentiate between objective and subjective sources. </li><li>Interrogate textual, video, and visual sources to build a picture of how different programs affected ordinary people.</li><li>Be able to translate their research into a presentation, and teach it to other students.</li></ul><p>See notes for lesson plan instructions.</p>
Mary Byrne
21