Phoebe Hillemann
Teacher Institutes Educator
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian Staff
As the Teacher Institutes Educator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, I organize our week-long summer institutes for middle and high school English and social studies teachers: http://americanart.si.edu/institutes. I'm interested in interdisciplinary thinking, arts integration, and the power of dialogue in learning spaces.
Phoebe Hillemann's collections
The Subway
Artworks, photographs, and other documents relating to the New York subway system.
Phoebe Hillemann
8
Japanese American Incarceration through Art and Documents
<p>These resources can be used in an activity that introduces a lesson on Japanese American Incarceration during World War II. </p>
<p>1. To begin, show students Roger Shimomura's painting entitled Diary: December 12, 1941. Without providing any background information, use the "Claim, Support, Question" routine to have students make claims about what they think is going on in the artwork, identify visual support for their claims, and share the questions they have about the painting. Document responses in three columns on large chart paper or a whiteboard.</p>
<p>2. Following this initial conversation, share the title, artist's name, and date of the painting. Ask students to consider the date in the title, and discuss what significance this date might have. If they don't figure out that this date was five days after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, share that information. Share with students that this painting is part of a series Roger Shimomura created based on the wartime diary entries of his grandmother, Toku, who was born in Japan and immigrated to Seattle, Washington in 1912. Along with thousands of other people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast during World War II , Toku and her family were forcibly relocated to an incarceration camp after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roger was a young boy during World War II, and remembers spending his third birthday in the Puyallup Assembly Center on the Washington state fairgrounds, where his family was sent before being transferred to Minidoka Reservation in Idaho for the duration of the war.</p>
<p>3. Jigsaw Activity, Pt. 1. After sharing this context, tell students they will each be receiving a primary source document that relates to the painting in some way. Distribute copies of "Woman at Writing Table," the Superman comic, the Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry, and Toku Shimomura's diary entries. Divide students into four groups, one per document. Give students time to analyze their document as a group and discuss how it affects their interpretation of the painting.</p>
<p>4. Jigsaw Activity, Pt. 2. Next, create new groups so that each group includes students who received each of the four sources. Ask students to briefly report on their document and what their original group discussed as its possible meaning and relation to Roger Shimomura's painting.</p>
<p>5. Return to the painting as a large group, and discuss how the primary source documents have influenced students' reading of the artwork. </p>
<p>6. Optional additional resource: If time allows, have students watch excerpts from Roger Shimomura's artist talk at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.</p>
<p>#APA2018</p>
<p><em>#visiblethinking</em><br></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
9
Climate Change and Alexis Rockman's Manifest Destiny
<p>In preparing to paint his large-scale mural, <em>Manifest Destiny</em>, a commission for the Brooklyn Museum's re-opening in 2004, Alexis Rockman consulted with climate change experts to imagine what Brooklyn might look like several centuries in the future when the glaciers have melted and sea levels have risen. </p><p>Teachers can use this painting as a starting point to discussing the issue of climate change, understanding what's at risk, and exploring mitigation strategies coastal cities might take to prevent an outcome like the one Rockman predicts.</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
6
Exploring Mickalene Thomas's Portrait of Mnonja
<p>In this activity, students will explore Mickalene Thomas's process, artistic influences, and art historical context. Students will examine Thomas's <em>Portrait of Mnonja </em>(2010, Smithsonian American Art Museum) in depth, and use three supporting resources to build context.</p>
<p>1. Have students look at Mickalene Thomas's <em>Portrait of Mnonja</em>. Give them 2-3 minutes to do a quick sketch of the painting.</p>
<p>2. Next, ask them to note the part of the painting their eye went to first on their sketch with a star.</p>
<p>3. Next, ask students to draw a line through their sketch to show the path their eye used to travel through the painting. Use arrows to indicate direction.</p>
<p>4. In pairs or as a class, ask students to share where their eye went first, and why they think it went there. Was it the color? Light? Lines? The placement in the composition?</p>
<p>5. Next, students should write a list of 8-10 words and phrases describing the painting. Ask for volunteers to share out.</p>
<p>6. As a group, discuss students' impressions of the painting. Ask for visual evidence to back up claims. (e.g. A student says, "she looks powerful." You ask, "what do you see that makes you say she's powerful?")</p>
<p>7. To further the conversation, share some background information about the painting: the title, the date, and the artist. Explain a little about Mickalene Thomas's process: posing live models in sets with props and furniture, taking photographs, then painting from the photographs.</p>
<p>8. Next, break students into small groups. Each group should receive a printout of ONE of the three supporting resources in this collection. Ask them to compare and contrast their image with <em>Portrait of Mnonja</em>.</p>
<p>9. After 4-5 minutes, ask each group to share out the main idea from what they discussed. The teacher should add additional information as it is useful.</p>
<p>a. Mickalene Thomas set photograph: Shows the artist's process, how she uses real models and sets. Note patterns and 1970s motifs.</p>
<p>b. Romare Bearden collage: Thomas has cited Bearden as one of her artistic influences. Students should note similarities in color, pattern, and flatness.</p>
<p>c. John Collier painting: An example from the early 1900s of the "reclining woman" in art history. Students should discuss the passiveness/agency of each of these women, and how a male artist's depiction of a woman differs from a female artist's in this case. Thomas was well versed in art history and was consciously making reference to precedents like this.</p>
<p>10. Writing Activity: In small groups, have students write a dialogue between Mnonja and someone else. It could be the artist, the viewer, or someone from one of the supporting resources.</p>
<p><em><br></em></p>
<p><em>Optional:</em> Have students view one or both of the short videos of Mickalene Thomas discussing<em> Portrait of Mnonja</em>. </p>
<p>#BecauseOfHerStory<br></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
7
Be The Curator with SAAM and NPG Collections
<p>Resources from the P21 Exemplar Teacher Workshop held at SAAM and NPG February 28, 2017.</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
10
Cultural Imagery and Stereotypes: The American Experience in the Classroom
<p>This collection focuses on two works that deal with the issues of nationality, identity and the assimilation of cultures. Mel Casas's pun-laced <em>Humanscape 62</em> combines elements familiar to many Americans: brownie desserts and a young Girl Scout (a Brownie), with traditional Mexican imagery. This pop art style-blend illustrates the Chicano experience to American culture and creates a push and pull narrative about Latino identity. Similarly, Roger Shimomura, an American-born artist of Japanese descent, contemplates repressed emotions from the time he and his family spent in World War II-era Japanese internment camps, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p>#APA2018</p>
<p><a href="http://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/contemporary-united-states/pair-humanscape-diary-december-12/">http://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/c...</a> </p>
Phoebe Hillemann
14
Urbanized America: The American Experience in the Classroom
The early years of the twentieth-century saw a significant increase in economic inequality between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest. While the rich continued to bathe in their unregulated, post-industrial age economic success, the poor, largely represented by the overwhelming influx of new immigrants, remained trapped in an unrelenting cycle of poverty and adversity. Many struggled to find prosperity and acceptance in a country where some American citizens harbored foreign resentment and racism. Emblematic of the hardships they encountered is artist Everett Shinn’s chaotic scene of Lower East Side Jewish immigrants being evicted from their homes. This scene in downtown New York City is starkly contrasted with artist Childe Hassam’s romanticized view of an ethereal woman in her uptown home surrounded by beautiful objects likely acquired through European travel. She represents the prosperous post-industrial age, where wealthy patrons demonstrated their cultural sophistication through the acquisition and display of exotic, priceless objects in their homes.<br /><br />
The expanding urban population precipitated the introduction of new building materials in the development of high-rise buildings and tenements, revolutionizing urban living. Technological innovations like the electrified elevator and the Bessemer steel process replaced older building techniques and enabled the construction of high-rise buildings, the new symbols of American progress. However, overcrowding of the evolving urban landscape also gave rise to problems such as poverty, disease, and lawlessness. These issues ultimately led to crucial social reform and legislation, known collectively as Progressivism.<br /><br /><a href="http://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/modern-united-states/pair-eviction-tanagra/">http://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/modern-united-states/pair-eviction-tanagra/</a>
Phoebe Hillemann
21
Reading American Art as a Historical Source
<p>How can American art be read as a historical text? How can it be used to explore the 2018 National History Day theme of "Conflict and Compromise in History"? This collection examines two works of American art closely, modeling the process of historical inquiry and analysis. It also shares several online resources on reading artwork in a historical context, and suggests additional artworks from SAAM's collection that might support the theme of Conflict and Compromise.</p>
<p>#NHD2018 #NHD</p>
<p>Keywords: Reconstruction, Civil War, John Rogers, Winslow Homer<br></p>
<p><em>#historicalthinking</em></p>
<p><br></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
30
Memory and Myth: George Washington in American Art
<p>George Washington is one of the most mythologized icons of American history, and one of the most frequently represented figures in American art. What can comparing and contrasting these varying representations tell us about our national understanding of this founding father and first American President? How does the historical context during which an artwork was made affect its subject matter? How does American art influence the way we think of Washington today? </p><p>Created for the National Council for History Education (NCHE) 2018 annual conference.</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
19
Remembering Dr. King: Six American Artists Respond
<p>April 4, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. These six artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection were created between 1968 and 1996, and respond to Dr. King's legacy in different ways. What does the date of each artwork tell us about the context during which it was made? What can we learn from looking at them as a collection?</p>
<p>Created for a March 1, 2018 webinar for alumni of SAAM's Summer Institutes: Teaching the Humanities through Art. </p>
<p><a href="https://americanart.si.edu/education/k-12/professional-development/summer-institutes" style="background-color:rgb(63,63,63);">https://americanart.si.edu/edu...</a> </p>
<p>#saamteach #martinlutherkingjr #mlk</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
8
Native American Art and Artists
<p>The artworks in this collection were made by artists who identify as Native American. What can we learn from the diversity of media and subject matter? How might these works be used to counter stereotypical narratives about American Indians? </p><p>Created for a March 20, 2018 webinar with Montana teachers.</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
17
Art as Argument: Contemporary Artists' Voices
<p>This collection explores the ways in which four American artists have used visual tools to share a message. In <em>Amendment #8</em>, Mark Bradford uses his layered paper and mixed media technique to challenge the viewer to consider how we are living up to the ideals of our founding documents. In <em>Portrait of Mnonja</em>, Mickalene Thomas references the art historical canon to address African American representation in museums. In <em>Life Magazine, April 19, 1968</em>, Alfredo Jaar manipulates a historical photograph to make visible the racial disparities it contains. And with her installation <em>Folding the Chesapeake</em>, Maya Lin begs us to see the critical importance of caring for the waterways around us. </p>
<p>Created for an April 16, 2018 webinar with Montana teachers.</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
12
Hindsight is Always 20/20
<p>In <em>Hindsight is Always 20/20</em>, Luke DuBois took the State of the Union addresses from each presidency (up through George W. Bush) and sorted them according to word frequency. The artist then printed the most frequently appearing works as an eye chart for each president, with the more frequently used words in larger type at the top of the chart and the less frequently used words toward the bottom. The traditional eye chart includes sixty-six letters; Luke DuBois’s charts substitute sixty-six words. The lists contain words that are not only important for the issues addressed by each president but also give an impression of how language was used at the time. Each of the forty-one presidencies to have State of the Union addresses at the time DuBois created this series (William Henry Harrison and James Garfield died before they could submit a single message to Congress) has its own eye chart. </p>
<p><em>Multiplicity</em>, 2011</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
42
Do Ho Suh: Almost Home
<p>Do Ho Suh’s immersive architectural installations—unexpectedly crafted with ethereal fabric—are spaces that are at once deeply familiar and profoundly alien. Suh is internationally renowned for his “fabric architecture” sculptures that explore the global nature of contemporary identity as well as memory, migration, and our ideas of home.</p>
<p>Suh was born in Korea and moved to the United States at the age of 29 in 1991, and he currently lives between New York, London, and Seoul. He crafts his works using traditional Korean sewing techniques combined with 3-D modeling and mapping technologies. Suh sees these works as “suitcase homes,” so lightweight and portable they can be installed almost anywhere.<br /></p>
<p>Essential Questions:</p>
<ul><li>What is home?
</li><li>How does perspective-taking help us better understand people, events, or issues?</li><li>How can artwork be used as a provocation for the exercise of higher order thinking and transdisciplinary application of content?</li></ul><p>Created for a program with the National Teachers of the Year on April 30, 2018.</p>
<p>#NTOY18</p><p><em>#visiblethinking</em><br /></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
13
Teaching Literary Devices through Art
<p>A good visual can often be the key to understanding (and remembering) a seemingly abstract concept. This collection demonstrates how artworks in the Smithsonian American Art Museum may be used to teach common literary devices in the English/language arts classroom such as metaphor, irony, symbolism, and more.</p>
<p>Key words: allegory, allusion, anthropomorphism, foreshadowing, irony, juxtaposition, metaphor, mood, motif, satire, suspense, symbol</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
30
NHD 2019: Triumph and Tragedy in American Art
<p>This collection is designed to support teachers and students exploring the 2019 National History Day theme: Triumph and Tragedy in History. Included in this collection are four prospective topics aligned with the NHD theme, for each of which we have supplied American artworks that could be used as primary source texts and/or inspiration for further research.</p>
<p>Was George Catlin's Indian Gallery an artistic triumph or exploitation of tragedy? How did the expansion of the railroad in the U.S. lead to both triumph and tragedy? How did the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) -- the first New Deal program supporting American artists -- create triumph out of the tragedy of the Great Depression? And finally, how was the fight for African American civil rights shaped by triumph and tragedy?</p>
<p>#NHD2019 #NHD</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
41
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man
<p>Each year in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a city of more than 70,000 people rises out of the dust for a single week. During that time, enormous experimental art installations are erected and many are ritually burned to the ground. The thriving temporary metropolis known as Burning Man is a hotbed of artistic ingenuity, driving innovation through its principles of radical self-expression, decommodification, communal participation, and reverence for the handmade. Both a cultural movement and an annual event, Burning Man remains one of the most influential phenomenons in contemporary American art and culture.<br /></p>
<p><em>No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, </em>an exhibition at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, brings the large-scale, participatory work from this desert gathering to the nation’s capital for the first time. This collection features video interviews with many of the artists whose artwork is featured in the show.</p><p><br /></p><p>Keywords: STEM, STEAM, Design Thinking, Installation Art, Public Art</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
17
Exploring Multiple Perspectives with American Art
<p>We started by doing a close reading of Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing," followed by an analysis of two paintings using Project Zero Thinking Routines:<br></p>
<ol><li><em>Iceman Crucified #4,</em> by Ralph Fasanella, using See, Think, Wonder</li><li><em>Braceros, </em>by Domingo Ulloa, using Step In, Step Out, Step Back</li></ol>
<p>Returning to the poem, consider how different people we identified in the two paintings might react to the poem. Next, choose two perspectives from any of the texts (written or visual) we've looked at, and use the Two Voice Poem template to compare their points of view on work in America.</p>
<p>Reflection Question: What do we gain by considering multiple perspectives on an issue?</p>
<p><em>This collection was created for the 2019 CATE annual convention in Burlingame, California. </em><br></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
7
#BecauseOfHerStory: Exploring Untold Stories through Portraiture and American Art
<p>Learn how American art and portraiture can bring diverse women’s stories into your classroom, connecting with themes you may already teach. Discover strategies for engaging your students in close looking and critical thinking across disciplines. #SAAMTeach #NPGteach<br /></p>
<p>RELATED WEBINAR SERIES (recordings available): <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/education/k-12/professional-development/webinars">https://americanart.si.edu/education/k-12/professional-development/webinars</a></p>
<p>This project received support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. To learn more, visit the <a href="https://womenshistory.si.edu/">Smithsonian American Women History Initiative website</a>. #BecauseOfHerStory</p>
<p><br /></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
19
Beauty and Truth: The Dust Bowl
<p>This collection explores Alexandre Hogue's 1933 painting <em>Dust Bowl</em> through a global thinking routine called "Beauty and Truth." Supporting materials help build historical and scientific context. </p>
<p><em>“Some may feel that in these paintings . . . I may have chosen an unpleasant subject, but after all the [drought] is most unpleasant. To record its beautiful moments without its tragedy would be false indeed. At one and the same time the [drought] is beautiful in its effects and terrifying in its results. The former shows peace on the surface but the latter reveals tragedy underneath. Tragedy as I have used it is simply visual psychology, which is beautiful in a terrifying way.” -Alexandre Hogue</em></p>
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Phoebe Hillemann
12
Subway: Jigsaw Activity
<p>Resources compiled for the Smithsonian American Art Museum's <strong>Summer Institutes: Teaching the Humanities through Art </strong>for a session developed by Peg Koetsch.</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
13
NHD 2020: Breaking Barriers with American Art
<p>This collection is designed to support teachers and students exploring the 2020 National History Day theme: Breaking Barriers in History. Included in this collection are five prospective topics aligned with the NHD theme, for each of which we have supplied American artworks that could be used as primary source texts and/or inspiration for further research.</p>
<p>How did the invention of photography break down the barrier between ordinary Americans and the battlefield during the Civil War? </p>
<p>What barriers, both geographic and social, did the invention and expansion of the subway break for New Yorkers? </p>
<p>How did James Van Der Zee's Harlem photography studio help a rising middle class African American community break barriers?</p>
<p>How have American Indians overcome barriers to tribal sovereignty, and what barriers still exist?</p>
<p>How did abstract painter Alma Thomas break gender and racial barriers in the art world?</p>
<p>#NHD2020 #NHD #BecauseOfHerStory</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
55
NCSS 2019: Teaching for Global Competence through American Art
<p>Resources used during a session at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference in Austin, TX on November 23, 2019.</p>
<p>Essential Question: How can visual art nurture students' capacities to take informed action as citizens in a complex, interconnected world?</p>
Phoebe Hillemann
8
Art as Argument: Dust Bowl to Climate Change
<p>How have American artists used visuals to bring attention to the pressing issues of their time? Compare and contrast a 1930s painting about the Dust Bowl with one addressing climate change made seventy years later, interpreting them in context to discover continuity and change over time. </p>
<p>Possible thinking questions for students to use with one or both paintings:</p>
<p></p>
<ul><li>Are these artworks primary sources? Does your answer depend on the context in which they are used?</li><li>What is "truthful" about these artworks? How might we use other sources to corroborate or check their truthfulness?</li><li>What do you think are the most effective media for making a compelling argument? Why? Student might consider speeches, photographs, newspaper op-eds, data visualizations like charts and graphs, videos/films, music, and visual art.</li></ul><p>Resources compiled for a March 2020 National Council for History Education (NCHE) conference session.<br /></p><p></p>
Phoebe Hillemann
11
