ArtNC News

Our statewide Educator Expos connect the disciplines through common concepts and art. More than 100 teachers gathered at our recent Expo in Greenville to muse on problem solving. Click below to hear their reflections and catch a glimpse of the event.

Each school year, the NCMA partners with four public school systems to bring our collections into classrooms across North Carolina. Art of Collaboration teachers use the visual arts to engage their students in learning about math, science, social studies, and language arts. Since the project’s inception in 2007, the Museum has partnered with over 120 middle school teachers from 29 schools in 15 counties across the state.

Read about how Rowan-Salisbury schools and Kannapolis City Schools are getting excited to participate in this unique program next school year. Buncombe and Craven County Schools will also be participating in 2012-13.

If you are interested in learning more about Art of Collaboration, check out this great video of AOC in action or contact Jill at jill.taylor@ncdcr.gov.

Have an art-integrated lesson you would like to share with other teachers? Submit your lesson plan to ArtNC and watch your ideas spread across the state. Submissions for all grade levels and disciplines are welcome. To be considered lesson plans must:

1) integrate Common Core State and NC Essential Standards objectives from visual arts and at least one other subject area,

2) incorporate investigation of a work in the NCMA collection,

3) relate to a Big Picture Concept.

Check out these lesson models for ideas. If you are interested in contributing, send a completed lesson plan using the attached template to aweinard@gmail.com. Each teacher whose lesson plan is selected for ArtNC will receive $200 for his or her original ideas.

By Kristen Thomas, High School Literacy Coach, Wake County Schools

Kristen presented three ways she integrates art into high school ELA at the recent NCMA Educator Expo in Greenville. Did you miss it? Listen to her voice-annotated presentation.

By Michael E. Flinchbaugh, Instructional Coach, J. H. Rose High School, Pitt County

As an instructional coach, I have the opportunity to work with teachers in every discipline. I recently worked with an outstanding young geometry teacher eager to challenge her students and incorporate literacy into her curriculum by assigning a geometry-based research paper/project. Rather than simply assigning mathematical research topics like the Pythagorean theorem or the golden mean, we created research problems based mostly on art, architecture, and nature.

Students were presented with an image and a problem to apply to that image. For example, one pair of students, given an image of the Eiffel Tower, had to figure out the reason the architect used triangles so extensively in his design. Another pair was asked to explain the use of the golden ratio in creating the beauty of the Mona Lisa.

Having solved their problems, at least partially, students wrote papers and presented their work to their classmates. Multidisciplinary learning was the end result, a result made possible only by teacher collaboration.

The Big Picture teamed up with the North Carolina Reading Association recently to reflect on how art can enhance literacy. Twenty-two teachers from all over the state (from Swain County to Tyrrell County!) put their heads together in North Carolina Museum of Art galleries to look at art, make connections, and learn new teaching strategies. Here’s what some of them had to say about their experiences:

This opens up a world of ideas! I am excited at creating plans/units that include a work of art.

Before the workshop it had never occurred to me to use art in literacy. I will now branch out.

I loved seeing how to connect comprehension skills in reading to works of art.

I had never thought about using writing and art together other than the “look and write about it” goal.  Now I’ve seen ways to teach writing through art.

The investigation continues at our July workshop, Teaching Visual Literacy (details coming soon). Meanwhile, check out the trove of lesson plans aligned to the new Common Core.

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa opens at the North Carolina Museum of Art this Sunday, March 18. The exhibition traces the career of contemporary artist El Anatsui—from his early woodwork in Ghana to today’s metal wall sculptures created in his studio in Nigeria.

This cool time-lapse video makes the installation of the El Anatsui exhibition look easy! However, installing a work by El Anatsui requires a lot of problem solving. The works are large, malleable, and heavy. They are not framed like a traditional painting on canvas; nor does the artist give any direction about how his works should be displayed. It is up to museum curators, art handlers, and conservators to hoist the metal works onto the wall and determine their final design.

NCMA conservator Perry Hurt describes the problems he faced when he first installed the Museum’s Lines That Link Humanity and his discovery of a special tool (chopsticks!) that made the work much easier.

Want to see your students’ work exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art this fall? Test out one of the many art-integrated lesson plans on ArtNC, and submit the best student work sample. (You are welcome to make modifications to the lesson plan to meet the needs of your students.) Two-dimensional works must be no larger than 18 x 24 inches, and three-dimensional works should be less than 10 inches deep.

Submissions from any grade level or subject area are welcome. Works will be selected based on the originality of the student work sample and the teacher’s use or adaptation of the art-integrated lesson plan. Selections will be made by June 29, 2012. Teachers must submit the physical works by August 6, 2012. Student works will be on view in the GlaxoSmithKline Student Gallery at the NCMA from October 23, 2012 through January 7, 2013.

To submit an entry, e-mail Ashley Weinard at aweinard@gmail.com with the following by May 31, 2012:

Entries must include:

• Photo of the student work sample (jpeg is recommended)
• Photo of the implementation of the lesson plan in the classroom (jpeg is recommended)
• Title of the related ArtNC lesson plan and a description of any modifications you made
• Two- to three-sentence description explaining why you think the student’s product is exemplary

Still wondering? Take a look at this post by middle school science teacher Jennifer Rogers and her related lesson plan on observation and geology.