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Classroom Videoconferencing: Artful Connections

Visit the Smithsonian American Art Museum without leaving your school! Free of charge, we offer videoconference field trips for students from kindergarten through college. Via real-time videoconferencing, museum docents lead the study of U.S. history and culture using our extensive holdings of American art. We have already held Artful Connections with teachers and students across the country—from the Garden State to the Golden State!

See the topics below for tour descriptions and participant feedback. Our content corresponds to national education standards, and tours can be tailored to match your specific objectives. Pre- and post-visit materials are available for school use. Planned for typical classroom periods, our video field trips range in length from thirty minutes to one hour. We welcome multiple visits with the same class!

To learn more or to schedule a tour, email the Education staff at SAAMMuseumTours@si.edu or call (202) 633-8550. Alternately, complete and submit the School Group Registration Form.

Looking at Art

To See Is to Think: Visual Literacy

Learn the language of art and consider the many choices artists make when creating art. Suitable for grades 3 through 8.

America's Signs and Symbols

Familiar icons of America—the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the bald eagle—symbolize the United States both to residents and to others around the world. Artists use these images to communicate their personal ideas and to encourage probing thought on American society. Designed for grades 4 through 12.

Art and Literature

Artists are often inspired by literature—the Bible, Shakespeare's plays, operas, poetry, myths, and folklore. Illustrating a specific passage or, more recently, exploring common issues, visual artists interpret the written word. This tour is a great springboard for grade 3 through 12 student writing exercises.

Folk Art: Beyond the Everyday

From beads to bottlecaps, foil to quilts, students will explore the diversity of the American folk art experience! This videoconference covers the main elements of folk art: self-taught artists, everyday materials, vision and imagination, storytelling and a sense of place. Intended for grades 3-12.

Contemporary Craft

Whether traditional or cutting edge, artworks in the Renwick Gallery's collection highlight recent craft achievements in glass, fiber, clay, metal, and wood. Intended for grades 4 through 12.

Learning History Through Art

America's Art: Highlights From Our Collection

Through artists' eyes, trace America's heritage—with particular emphasis on our relationship to the land. From sea to shining sea, from wilderness to urban centers, discover the social, political, and technological innovations that have profoundly affected American life and art. Suitable for grades 3 through 12.

Young America

How have artists depicted the U.S. war for independence? How have those images shaped ideas and assumptions about the American Revolution? How do artists combine both fact and myth in reinterpreting history? Designed for grades 4 through 12.

"Our kids loved the virtual tour. You'll be hearing from other teachers here." — fifth-grade teacher

Lure of the West

As both a place and an ideal, the American West retains a powerful allure in popular culture. Explore depictions of the people, lifestyles, and landscape of the nineteenth-century West to better understand this dynamic period of history. Suitable for grades 4 through 12.

A House Divided: Civil War

The Civil War tested and consumed the country for more than four years. Many families were touched by death in the bloodiest conflict our nation's history. How did the new technology of photography depict the country and the war? What do paintings and sculpture reveal of life during Reconstruction? Intended for grades 7-12.

Reshaping American Life

This videoconference asks students to question and evaluate the role of the federal government in the aftermath of the depression. By examining the 1930s in light of FDR's New Deal, participants analyze WPA and PWAP objects to understand the effect of the depression on the United States and the role of the federal governement./p>

New Voices, New Visions

Twentieth-century upheavals produced rapid social, political, and economic change. Artists, likewise, challenged traditions of the past. Exploring a wide range of themes, styles, and media in contemporary art, visual images link to current events, mass media, and technology. Designed for middle and high school.

"Thanks for an outstanding, comprehensive presentation on the American Impressionists. …Particularly helpful were comparisons and contrasts and…history and attitudes leading up to the movement." — coordinator, senior adult programs, county recreation department

Celebrating Heritage

Free within Ourselves: African American Artists

The lives of African American artists lend insight into the historical, social, and cultural context of their works.

"The kids really enjoyed the virtual tour presentation. They were a little shy about talking on air, but later they did their talking! By not leaving school, for my kids, it takes away the stress from unfamiliar experiences. The docents talked about things our kids read about in books—apartheid, masks, farming, for example. Thank you for putting all this together." — high school teacher

Appropriate for grades 3 through 12.

Latino Art and Culture

Artistic achievements of Hispanic Americans from the 1860s to the present represent the diversity of the Latino community and reflect historical and cultural developments that have transformed American art. Appropriate for grades 3 through 12.

Beating the Odds: African American Women Artists

Learn stories of how eight African American women represented in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection "beat the odds" to become recognized and respected in the mostly male-dominated art world. This 30- to 45-minute virtual field trip, designed for middle and high school students, explores not only their struggle to develop and be accepted as artists but also how their art reflects their times and cultural heritage, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

Native Americans

Viewers can detect shifting attitudes toward American Indians in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century works by non-native artists. Participants also examine twentieth-century Native American artists whose works express their cultural heritage and concerns. Intended for grades 4 through 12.

Pictured top: Robert Indiana, The Figure Five, 1963, oil, 60 x 50 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase

Pictured second: Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way (mural study, US Capitol), 1861, oil, 33 1/4 x 43 3/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, bequest of Sara Carr Upton

Pictured third: Romare Bearden, Family, 1986, collage, 28 X 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, Art-in-Architecture Program

Pictured fourth: Laura Wheeler Waring, Portrait of Alma Thomas, ca. 1945, oil, 30 x 25 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1977.121

Pictured fifth: Velino Shije Herrera, Story Teller, about 1925–35, 10 1/16 X 15 1/16 in., gouache and pencil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Corbin-Henderson Collection, gift of Alice H. Rossin