<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>

<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>

<p>This collection was created for the Smithsonian Summer Sessions for Teachers in July 2020, and contains resources related to the Smithsonian American Art Museum's breakout session as well as additional education resources for teachers and students.<br></p> <p>#SummerSessions</p>

<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>

<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>

<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>

<p>Explore images of Washington, DC, using artworks in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Compare them to the present, learning about changing neighborhoods, people and daily life, natural resources, and arts &amp; culture. This collection can be adapted for students of different grade levels learning about DC history.</p>

<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>

<p>Explore different styles of writing in response to American art! This digital collection suggests artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum to use to inspire creative, narrative, and argumentative writing, along with suggested thinking routines and writing prompts. The categories are fluid -- many artworks can be used successfully for more than one type of writing!<br></p>

<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>

<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>

<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>