Exploring Art
Education Programs for Students:
School Visits and Outreach
Student create mobiles in a stability and balance
workshop. Photo by Erich Keel.
School Visits
The Kreeger Museum's Education Department offers a dynamic program of school visits for public and private schools. Each program consists of a docent-guided tour of the museum followed by a workshop led by a professional artist. The purpose of these visits is to give students space to respond creatively to topics raised at school and in the museum. Specific tour options are listed below.
To schedule a school visit, call 202-338-3552 or email
visitorservices@kreegermuseum.org.
StoryTime
Docent Toby Kahn leads a
StoryTime workshop.
Grades: pre-K through 1st
60 minutes
Listen–Explore–Make! The art and architecture of The Kreeger Museum brought to life with stories, old and new. As the stories unfold, the young visitors will also learn about primary elements of art as line, shape, and color.
Please note: A workshop activity is offered by the StoryTime leader.
Docent Helen Chason
discusses a Mondrian
landscape during a nature tour.
Nature Through Art
Grades: 2nd through 5th
90 minutes
A thematic tour that invites students to look at landscapes and still lifes with the purpose of discovering how artists draw or paint natural forms and depict the larger context—nature as wilderness or nature controlled by man. Students will study decisions on compositional structures, such as foreground, middle ground, background and will learn that art is a vehicle for expressing personal views of nature.
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Auguste Rodin,
Mercury
Standing, n.d.
Bronze, with base
Understanding the Human Figure
Grades: 4th through 7th
90 minutes
Based on the Kreeger’s diverse collection of African, Asian, and Western art, this tour gives students the opportunity to study the different purposes of figurative art. They will learn to distinguish a realistic likeness (portrait) from images made for veneration (religious statues), ritual performances (masks), and
remembrance (memorials). Students will also discover how artists paint, carve or model the figure to make visible abstract concepts or ideas.
Wassily Kandinsky, Contrasts,
1937. Gouache on gray paper
Seeing Shapes and Colors
Grades: 4th through 8th
90 minutes
More than anything else, color appears to define painting. Likely to producing a wide range of emotional effects, color has a grammar and may be understood logically with the color wheel and the theory of color contrasts. Students examine abstract and figurative paintings and are asked to determine why artists use light and dark tones, warm and cool colors, and primaries, secondaries, and complementaries.
The Making of Architecture
Students create a building model during an
architecture tour. Photo by Erich Keel
90 minutes
Completed in 1967, the Kreeger house was designed by Philip Johnson for Mr. and Mrs. Kreeger to serve as their residence, private art gallery, and recital hall. In 1994 the house opened to the public as an art museum. During this visit, students learn important choices an architect has to make in terms of shape, form, flow, light, and context if the design is to meet the client’s demands.
Drummer Kristen Arant leads a drum circle during a
Hear Art/See Music tour. Photo by Antonia Valdes-
Dapena
Hear Art/See Music
Grades: 5th through 8th
120 minutes
The result of a three-year federally funded project, this museum program was developed for students with different learning styles. In place of stressing verbal interpretations, students search for shared qualities in the visual arts and music, such as colors and timbre (tone color), and rhythm and pattern. In the galleries, students play music to selected paintings or African masks; in the workshop they draw in response to selected pieces of music.
Note: All programs are classroom presentations
American Art and Architecture:
Statues, Monuments and Memorials
Grades: 4th through 8th
45 to 60 minutes
The Lincoln Memorial
Relying on images of the capital’s extraordinary pantheon of public art, a Kreeger Museum educator introduces students to the political ideas and ideals that sculptors or architects communicate.
Picturing War
Grades: 6th through 10th
45 to 60 minutes
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas.
Collection of the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid
War in art: this slide-illustrated talk addresses the question of how artists, American and foreign, convey the human dimensions of conflict. Qualities such as heroism, sacrifice, and loss will be discussed in terms of artistic style and technique. Art included in the talk are Picasso’s Guernica, Henry Moore’s Falling Warrior, and Miro’s dramatic commentaries on the Spanish Civil War.
