Lesson Plans and Pre-visit Guides

Current search results within: Grade, High School

• Composing a Landscape (Lesson Plan)

  Study the relationship between the human and natural worlds in art, as well as the techniques artists use to convey ideas, by exploring a painting by Frederic Edwin Church in the Museum's American Wing. Extend the lesson through a writing and drawing activity in the classroom, or a sketching activity outdoors.

• Court Arts of Islamic Spain (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to identify shared visual characteristics among several works of art from Islamic Spain; recognize ways designs are adapted across a range of media; and cite strengths and limitations of various materials.

• Daily Life in Medieval Nishapur (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to recognize ways works of art reflect medieval Nishapur's status as an important center of trade; use visual evidence to support inferences; and apply an original two-dimensional design to a three-dimensional form (in alternative activity).

• Domestic Life in Eighteenth-Century Damascus (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to understand how a reception room from the house of an affluent family in eighteenth-century Damascus reflects the tastes, interests, and life of the urban elite in a provincial city of the Ottoman empire; and recognize ways interiors from different time periods and places (including their own) reflect the personal tastes, interests, and values of their inhabitants.

• European Paintings (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to depictions of the classical world, genre works, landscapes, and still lifes created amid the religious, political, and intellectual shifts in Renaissance through the eighteenth-century Europe. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Geometric Design in Islamic Art (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to use a compass and straightedge to construct regular polygons; and recognize ways works of art from the Islamic world utilize geometric forms and relationships.

• Islam and Religious Art (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to identify important figures and events in early Islamic history; recognize ways works of art reflect and support religious beliefs and practices; and use visual evidence to support inferences.

• Manet—Critics and Champions (Lesson Plan)

  Exercise students' sensory and descriptive powers in the Museum or the classroom with an imaginative activity and viewing questions focused on a painting by Édouard Manet. Examine the ways artists are inspired by the past and help students understand the context of Manet's career.

• Modern and Contemporary Art (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the effects that industrialization, mechanization, and massive population shifts to cities had on art, as well as the rise of abstraction, formalism, and art that employs new media and technologies. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, themes to consider, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Science and the Art of the Islamic World (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to identify similarities and differences between scientific tools used now and long ago; and use research findings to support observations and interpretations.