The World’s Art at your fingertips: Digital Collections from around the world

C A R A G O G E R M A R I P O S A C O U N T Y A R T S C O U N C I L

goger@mariposaartscouncil.orgwww.mariposaartscouncil.org209 966 3155

FULL STEAM AHEAD: ANNUAL REGION 7 ARTS AND EDUCATION SUMMIT, MARCH 6, 2015

Museums and Kids

“Trips to an art museum contribute to the development of students…[children who visit a museum, even a few times] have stronger critical thinking skills, exhibited increased historical empathy, display high levels of tolerance, and have a greater taste for consuming art and culture.”

Jay P. Greene, Brian Kisida and Daniel H. Bowen, “Value of Field Trips: Taking Students to an Art Museum Improves Critical Thinking and More,” Education Next: Winter 2014, pages 78-86.

Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture.

Association of College and Research Libraries, “ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” American Library Association: October 2011.

Museum Collections

A defining feature of a museum is a permanent collection of unique objects. This collection is used to curate and design exhibitions, build educational and community outreach programs, and be primary source material for academic research. Collections are not brought together in haphazard ways but are built through careful and intentional selection ensuring that the included objects supports the museum’s mission and are of a certain quality.

Virtual visitors to museum websites already out-number physical (on-site) visitors, and many of these are engaged in dedicated learning.

Roy Hawkey, King’s College London

Digital Collections

Teaching with Works of Art

1. Ask open ended questions.

Visual Thinking Strategies

- What is going on in this picture?

- What do you see that makes you say that?

- What more do you see?

2. Layer Information

3. Incorporate Activities

4. Make Connections

5. Reflection

Curating

Today, curating as a profession means at least four things. It means to preserve, in the sense of safeguarding the heritage of art. It means to be the selector of new work. It means to connect to art history. And it means displaying or arranging the work. But it's more than that. Before 1800, few people went to exhibitions. Now hundreds of millions of people visit them every year. It's a mass medium and a ritual. The curator sets it up so that it becomes an extraordinary experience and not just illustrations or spatialised books.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curator“The Art of Curation,” The Guardian, March 23, 2014

@Large: Ai Weiwei on AlcatrazSeptember 27, 2014 – April 26, 2015

at Alcatraz IslandFor-Site Foundation, National Park

Service and the Gold Gate Parks Conservancy

Interactive Features

Tang Teaching Museum Skidmore CollegeClassless Society explores class in America today from various social and economic perspectives, through contemporary art, popular culture, music, film, literature, and advertising.

O B J E C T : P H O T O

Museum of Modern Art InteractivesThis interactive explores the Thomas Walther Collection of photographs (341 images taken in the 1920’s and 30’s by 150 artists) and features four interactive visualization models to reveal the intersections and relationships among the photographers, the artists, and the materials and techniques they used in ever-changing geographic locations and across sliding spans of year.

Lesson Plans

ArtNCWorks of art, lesson plans (broken down by grade level, subject area content, skill), concept maps, video demonstrations, and professional development content for teachers.

MoMA LearningDigital hub designed to give educators the tools they need to help their students engage with art. Dynamic and content rich interface and downloadable PowerPoints and worksheets.

Smithsonian EducationLesson plans related to the Smithsonian’s many collections.

Student Centered Interactives

TATE KIDSStudents can create their own gallery, play games, watch videos, create their own artwork.

RijksStudio

Students and adults can created their own masterpieces (t-shirts, phone cases, postcards, etc.) using images from Rijksmuseum’s extensive collection.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” Pablo Picasso

Sources

Bowen, Green and Kisida. (2014) Learning to Think Critically: A Visual Art Experiment. Educational Researcher, Vol. 43, No. 1 (pp.37-44)

Bowen, Green and Kisida. (2014) Value of Field Trips. Education Next, Winter 2014 (pp. 78-86)

DeSantis and Housen. (2007) Aesthetic Development and Creative and Critical Thinking Skills Study. Visual Understanding in English.

Hattwig, Bussert, Medaille and Burgess. (2012) Visual Literacy Standards in Higher Education: New Opportunities for Libraries and Student Learning. Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (pp. 61-89)

Housen. (2001) Aesthetic Thought, Critical Thinking and Transfer. Arts and Learning Research Journal, Vol. 18, No.1 (pp. 99-132)

Obrist. (2014) The Art of Curation. The Guardian.

Resources

Art Institute Chicago (S, C, LP, V)ArtNC (LP, links to North Carolina’s Museum of Art’s Collection)The British Museum (S, LP, V)Crystal Bridges: Museum of American Art Getty (S, LP)The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation (S, LP, V)Harvard Art Museums (S, C)Library of Congress (S, LP, V)Los Angeles County Museum of Art (S, C)Louvre (S, I – find under “Learning About Art” )Metropolitan Museum of Art | www.metmuseum.org/collection (S, C, LP)Museo Nacional Centro de Arte: Reina Sofia (S, V)Museum of Modern Art (S. C. LP, I, V)Museum of Modern Art Interactives Museum of Modern Art Learning Rijkmuseum (S, C)Seattle Art Museum (S)Smithsonian (S, C, LP)Smithsonian Education Tang Teaching Museum Skidmore College Tate (S, C, LP)

S = easy to search, C = possible to create personal collection, LP = lesson plans/resources, I = interactives, V = videos/podcasts

Visual Understanding in Education (VTS) Museums and the Web (check out their “Best of the Web”)