Remote Learning & Homeschooling

Try out these educational materials | NEW! Virtual Art-Spot: Kids of MAG (PDF)

The past few months have brought many new realizations to most of us. Those at home with school-age children are learning how hard teachers work to keep their students engaged and moving forward!

Although the environment for students has certainly changed, learning can continue. Please accept our invitation to view, download, and spend time with our teacher resources listed below.

Happy browsing,
~ Your friends at MAG

Click on any of the following links that stir up your curiosity, and start learning to look and looking to learn!

MAGexplore

Use your mobile phone, tablet or computer to dig deeper into the MAG collection. This interactive, MAGexplore, will take you upstairs, downstairs and throughout MAG’s outside Centennial Sculpture Park: you now have 5,000 years of world art at your fingertips!

shown above: Aurélien-Marie Lugné-Poë (1869-1940) by Édouard Vuillard (detail), Calligraphics by Isamu Noguchi, Antelope Crest Masks, Galaxy (detail) by Fritz Trautmann

Art-Spot

Get some fresh air and explore MAG’s Sculpture with our NEWEST Art-Spot on #publicart! Download and print, or view it on your device (even works great on smartphone). How many of MAG’s outdoor artworks can you spot?

Download this PDF and see how many of the little bronzes you can find in our Sculpture Park. Artist Tom Otterness designed this sculpture installation, Creation Myth, especially for MAG’s urban art space.

MAG Gallery Guides
Originally designed for in-gallery use, these guides provide a closer look at some of MAG’s favorite objects.

• The Arts of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome (PDF)
• Art at the Crossroads: Art Across Cultures, Ancient Middle Eastern, and Islamic Art (PDF)

Use our “teaching tips” to help you look more closely at works of art and find interesting things to talk about together:

• Five Question Protocol: Art and Observation at the University of Rochester:
  Originally designed to help train healthcare providers to look and listen more closely during patient interactions, this set of questions can be useful for anyone interested in close looking.
• The Articulate Object Worksheet: (PDF)
  Grab a collection of objects that you already have at home (may we suggest a varied assortment of spoons/kitchen gadgets for starters? Seriously). Then have your students fill in the two worksheets as they for gather information about their “artifacts.”
• Learning to Look: (PDF)
  A ten-page guide for looking and learning with a MAG favorite, Lilly Martin Spencer’s painting, Peeling Onions (ca. 1852).
• Learning to Look: (PDF)
  A ten-page guide for looking and learning with another MAG favorite, Jerome Myers’ painting, Sunday Morning (1907).

ArtAlive
These guided looking and thinking activities were originally designed for elementary students, grades K-6:

• Art Alive: Boomtown (PDF) below left
• Art Alive: Summer Street Scene in Harlem (PDF) below center
• Art Alive: The Fable of the Fox and the Heron (PDF) below right

Prepare for your in-home tour of MAG’s art collection by using these materials originally designed as pre-visits for student school tours:

• Learning to Look Looking to Learn (PDF)
• Animals in Art (PDF)
• Many Faces, Many Places (PDF)
• Genesee Journey: Seeing Rochester and the Genesee Region Through Artists’ Eyes (PDF)
• Passport to the Past Go to a new webpage to find a variety of resources that connect to NYS Standards, including images of art from ancient and classical cultures, traditional Africa, Oceania and Renaissance Europe.

Try these additional educational materials featuring some MAG favorites:

• NEW Virtual Art-Spot: Kids of MAG
  The Kids of MAG are ready to join your class. What is their story? What questions would you ask them?

• A Summertime Diary
  Ever wonder what the people in MAG artworks are thinking and saying? Make a short Summertime Diary by helping them to speak!

• Staycation: Rochester!
  History is all around us. For two centuries, artists have appreciated the many scenic and historic sites of Rochester and the Genesee Valley. Finish your summer staycation with a virtual trip back in time and then explore the area today.

• An Unfinished Portrait (PDF)
  Do you have a project you started but never completed? Look at the unfinished portrait of Boston silversmith Nathaniel Hurd, and imagine how you might finish it. And create your own self-portrait!

• Hold that Pose (PDF)
  Capturing figures in motion is a challenging task for an artist. Imagine yourself to be the model as the artist captures your gestures, and test your ability to a Hold That Pose. Have some fun positioning your body in the poses of favorite MAG artworks.

• Art and Nature: Become a Birdwatcher (PDF)
  Birdwatching is a popular outdoor activity, but did you know you can go birdwatching at an art museum too? The birds in artworks are easy to observe—they don’t fly away! Art and Nature: Become a Birdwatcher! offers tips and techniques for close-looking inside and out, as well as a link to the NYS I Bird NY challenges.

• Struggle for Justice (PDF)
  Take time to hear the voices of two African-Americans, from two different generations, in image and words.

• Your Treasure, Your Story (PDF)
  Imagine having to choose one item that is not only precious to you but also represents the special person you are. If you had to move and could only take that one thing, what would you choose? Record your ideas and see the choices made by others in MAG’s Rochester Homelands Exhibition which celebrated the rich cultural traditions people brought to Rochester in the early 20th century.

• Pittsford on the Erie Canal: Seasons and Senses (PDF)
  MAG’s painting Pittsford on the Erie Canal was painted in 1837 when the artist George Harvey visited the area and sketched the scene from King’s Landing near what is now King’s Bend Park outside the Village of Pittsford. Let’s get outside and capture the scenery! Beautiful colors and textures are all around us, and they change throughout the day, or as seasons change. Use the templates included in this PDF to create one-of-a-kind landscape art to enjoy all year long, or send to your friends!

• Soldiers in Art: Remembering America’s Troops Through Art (PDF)
  Often eyewitnesses themselves, artists document and commemorate the lives and heroics of America’s soldiers. Explore and take time to think about the wartime experiences depicted in the MAG Collection and how these artists connect us to important moments in our history.

• Storyboard: Sketching Out a Story in Sequence (PDF)
  Imagine a movie, graphic novel, or comic strip starring your favorite work of art. Bring art to life by creating your own story with this storyboard activity. Anything is possible, what happens next is up to you!

• Puzzle Challenge (PDF)
  Puzzled by modern art? This artist’s work is like a puzzle, tiny pieces intricately assembled into complex shapes. No correct single solution here as the artist allows the museum to choose the final arrangement. Try it at home and see how many possible combinations you can discover!

• Seeing | Speaking | Sharing: Let’s talk about art!
  Enjoy this fun activity individually or with the entire family. Seeing | Speaking | Sharing (PDF) will guide you through discussing all that you discover in an artwork or artifact from MAG’s Permanent Collection or the world around you. Remember, so many everyday objects in your home were carefully designed and created just like the artwork at MAG!

• Word Spill: An inspiration for your own verbal creativity!
  Think you have anything to write about? Use Word Spill (PDF) to help you focus on details of a work of art and generate the words that describe what you see, and think, and feel.
  Now repeat the exercise with an object you look at every day in your home, or try it with the view out your window!

• Frederick Douglass
  Access visual art and poetry by artists paying tribute to Douglass, including selections from The African-American Experience through Poets Walk and Story Walk at MAG.

• Willie Cole (PDF)
  See how one African-American artist draws inspiration from traditional African art. Make old traditions, favorite objects, or stories new again just as Willie Cole illustrates through his work. He suggests bicycles can be seen as the “work animals” of today, part of a long tradition celebrating the animals in our lives. Hear Willie Cole himself in this short video!

• Paper Sculpture (PDF)
  Now here’s something to make you smile – art making ideas from MAG’s 2005 exhibition The Paper Sculpture Show.

• Better Things
  Looking at works of art from MAG’s collection in new way, and based on the book, Better Things, by photographer Douglas Holleley, this resource encourages you to read images, interpret and re-interpret them, and create new works of art that speak for you.