Getting Started: Teaching Materials for the Memorial Art Gallery exhibit

1. This online slide set and teaching materials duplicate actual slide sets and teaching material packets that are intended to prepare you and your students for the About Face exhibit at the Memorial Art Gallery. Slide Sets and packets are available for loan from the Gallery's Teacher Resource Center.
2. There is a great deal of information in this teaching packet organized to make choosing lessons as easy as possible for teachers. This teaching packet is divided by topic. Within each topic there are images, information, and lessons that will help make your visit to the About Face exhibit as rewarding as possible.
3. Familiarize yourself with the slides and materials in this teaching packet prior to sharing them with your students.
4. Each slide is numbered and labeled to correspond to the background information.
5. Each lesson has a Curriculum Connection label to identify the lesson's educational focus.
6. The Information section for each slide is intended to provide you, the teacher, with some background on each object and does not necessarily need to be made available to the students. You will find that most of the pre-visit materials and activities expect that the students will have little or no prior knowledge of the objects before examining them.
7. Each group of slides and their Information sections are accompanied by a number of suggested lesson plans and questions. The lesson plans are available to be used or altered as each teacher sees fit in designing a gallery visit around her/his class's needs and interests.
8. The Think about it suggestions provide questions meant to facilitate further discussion and/or research.
9. Relevant websites and other works in the Memorial Art Gallery are included in an effort to expand the students' learning experience beyond the About Face exhibit. These options will provide students with an opportunity to apply the analytical looking skills developed in this exhibit to new materials.
10. Included in this teaching packet is a CD-ROM that is also found on the two computer kiosks in the exhibit room of the About Face exhibit. The CD-ROM copy provided in the teaching packet is intended for post-visit classroom use.

What to do when visiting the exhibition:
About Face was designed to encourage a self-guided experience of the exhibit. This packet suggests additional activities to enhance student learning in the exhibit. The installation of the About Face exhibit contains a great deal of activities for students to engage in while visiting the Memorial Art Gallery. The label texts use interactive formats, there are two computer kiosks containing the About Face CD-ROM, and there are a number of books available for reference on life in colonial America. In addition to other activities present in the exhibit room, there are a number of lesson plans in this teaching packet that require student participation while at the Gallery.

Learning to Look
Did you know that many people will spend less than 30 seconds looking at paintings? These are the same people that spend six or more hours reading a book, two hours watching a movie or play, and more than an hour listening to a CD. Why are people so quick to look away from art? If you spent less than 30 seconds listening to a symphony, would you truly understand the way the composer uses instruments and rhythm to create a mood or express an emotion? Many people not only listen to symphonies in their entirety, but also will happily listen to them again and again. By taking the time to truly listen to and experience music, you open yourself up to a rich and engaging experience with the style and content of the music. The same goes for a work of art. The amount of time people spend looking at and experiencing a work of art generally does not do justice to the amount of time artists spend creating art. Some artists can spend months and years working and reworking their art! It is our job as viewers to explore the relationships between the painting's formal qualities (ex. line, color, shape, etc.), its content, and our personal reaction to the work.

Many viewers don't take the time to ask questions or develop their personal aesthetic reaction to a painting. Why are some paintings or sculptures more visually appealing to you than others? What can you do to encourage basic looking and thinking skills in yourself and your students? Begin by taking the time to look and cultivate an aesthetic response to a work of art. You'll be amazed what happens when you look at a painting or sculpture for an extended period of time, about two to four minutes. Begin asking questions addressing the visual nature of the art in front of you:

• What are the most prominent elements of this work? Line? Color? Light? Shape?
• How do these elements affect your reaction to the work of art?
• How does the artist's use of these elements relate to the subject matter of the work?
• Can you identify what it is that does or does not attract you to the work of art?

These questions can be difficult to answer. An aesthetic reaction is a personal, subjective experience. You may find a painting attractive or engaging for entirely different reasons than the person standing next to you. The key is to take your time, look at the painting, and allow your immediate reaction to be expressed. Then capture that reaction, and reflect upon it. Ask yourself what is it about the painting that caused you to react the way you did? After you have reflected on your reaction, look at the painting again. There is a very good chance you will see something new that you had not noticed before.

It might help to provide you with some vocabulary to explain your responses to a work of art.

Formal Elements of Painting:
Line - Line is technically a mark made by a moving point. Lines can function in many ways in art to define space, or create the illusion of forms in space. Lines can also be very expressive formal elements. When you see a line that is thick, dark, and steady, it appears stable and strong. If a painting has an outline of a man in a thick, dark, steady line, then the figure of the man appears stable and strong. Sometimes artists will use a thin, winding, erratic line to express something about what they are drawing. For example, if an artist drew the outline of a man with a thin, winding, erratic line, then the figure of the man might appear unstable, or nervous.

Color - Color has been used in many ways throughout the history of art. Some artists use descriptive color, meaning they depict color in the way it appears in the actual world. If the sky is blue, then they will paint it blue. Other artists use color in a subjective way to express something they are trying to convey. For example, an artist may paint his/her sky red to express something about themselves, the sky, or the meaning of the painting.

Space - In painting, space is created by the artist's manipulation of the paint on the canvas. The artist can create an illusion of a three-dimensional environment on a two-dimensional surface. For example, a three-dimensional space is created when an artist paints a convincing depiction of a room with objects that appear to exist within that space. Some artists prefer to create paintings that retain a two-dimensional, flat surface.

Light - Light can act to define space in a painting. This is visible when we see an artist using light to cause an object to cast a shadow, or reflect off an object to make it appear as a solid form. Light is also sometimes used for expression, or to create a mood. Painting a figure in a dark room may express something ominous or frightening to the viewer. A figure drenched in sunlight expresses something quite different.

Composition - Composition is generally understood as the way in which the artist organizes the formal elements (ex. line, color, and light) in his painting. Composition too can be expressive or descriptive. A composition that consists of 12 figures of people all squeezed into a corner of the canvas will express something different than a composition that is symmetrical, with six figures evenly distributed on each side of the canvas.