Exhibition-Related Teacher Handouts
Inside K-12 Teacher Resources:
Heartland
Throughout the vast interior of the United States, contemporary artists are responding to the world around them and reshaping it in unexpected ways. Organized by the Smart Museum of Art and the Van Abbemuseum, this exhibition includes site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video from a diverse assembly of artists who are redefining the cultural terrain of the American Heartland.
Heartland Teacher Handout (1.8 MB PDF)
Heartland Transparencies (3.3 MB PDF)
Your Pal, Cliff: Selections from the H. C. Westermann Study Collection
Horace Clifford (H. C.) Westermann (1922–1981) created a meticulously crafted and highly personal body of work that defies easy categorization. Mixing artworks with largely unstudied archival material and ephemera, this comprehensive and revealing exhibition examines Westermann's signature themes, craftsmanship, and the convergence of his life and art.
Your Pal, Cliff Teacher Handout (2 MB PDF)
Your Pal, Cliff Transparencies (5.3 MB PDF)
Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art
This exhibition presents the work that four leading contemporary Chinese artists—Chen Qiulin, Yun-Fei Ji, Liu Xiaodong, and Zhuang Hui—have created in response to the massive Three Gorges Dam. Despite differences in backgrounds, these artists have engaged with the theme of displacement, responding to the movement of people, the demolition of old towns and construction of new cities, and the astonishing changes the dam is bringing to the local landscape.
Displacement Teacher Handout (PDF)
Displacement Transparencies (PDF)
Seeing the City: Sloan's New York
John Sloan's images of New York helped define the city in the popular imagination. In gritty depictions of urban life, Sloan celebrated the metropolis of New York by focusing on street scenes, elevated trains, public spaces, and the lives of ordinary Americans. Gathering together a wealth of material in all media from 1900 to the 1930s, this exhibition maps Sloan's New York and examines the personal meaning tied to the places he chose to depict again and again.
Seeing the City Teacher Handout (PDF)
Adaptation: Video Installations By Ben-Ner, Herrera, Sullivan, and Sussman & The Rufus Corporation
While adaptation is a common practice in popular culture, it is perhaps less well known as a practice in contemporary art. This exhibition looks at the use of adaptation in the recent work of four leading artists: Guy Ben-Ner, Arturo Herrera, Catherine Sullivan, and Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation. These artists have transformed source material to make their own adapted works of art, re-envisioning classic literature, painting, film, ballet, and even e-mail for new video installations.
Adaptation Teacher Handout (PDF)
Adaptation Transparencies (PDF)
Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery
Whether made as preparatory studies or stand-alone works, drawings offer an intimate glimpse at an artist's personality and talents. With selections from the Yale University Art Gallery, this exhibition provides a compelling survey of European draftsmanship from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century and includes masterworks by Guercino, Jacob Jordaens, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Jean-Antoine Watteau, and Edgar Degas, among many others.
Master Drawings Teacher Handout (PDF)
Living Modern: German and Austrian Art and Design, 1890–1933
Modernism was not only an innovative aesthetic recognized by its crisp, abstracted forms and progressive use of materials, but it was also a way of thinking about contemporary life. With works representing several major artistic and design movements—including Symbolism, Jugendstil, Expressionism, New Objectivity, and the Bauhaus—the exhibition looked at the various "Modernisms" that together contributed to the richness of life in Germany and Austria during a remarkable period of cultural, social, and political transformation.
Living Modern Teacher Handout (PDF)
Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen
Cosmophilia—literally "love of ornament"—examined one of the most characteristic and attractive features of Islamic art. Covering a millennium of Islamic history in regions extending from Spain to India, this comprehensive exhibition surveyed the extraordinary range and visual virtuosity of one of the world's great artistic traditions. With works drawn from the David Collection in Copenhagen, Denmark, it offered a rare opportunity for audiences in the United States to study one of the finest collections of Islamic art.
Cosmophilia Teacher Handout (PDF)