Using Art to Interpret History

I found a lot of inspiration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. First of all, I love the "tableau vivant" strategy of analyzing paintings. I frequently use art in my classroom and ask my students to analyze body language, emotions, light/dark, etc., but I never thought to have them reenact the paintings. The idea of tableau vivant is to assign a student to be the director and help the other students get into proper position. This strategy forces learners to really observe the finer details and what they might implicate, allowing learners to take their analysis a step further.

Our group takes a stab at "tableau vivant" with Washington Crossing the Delaware!

Secondly, I also teach world geography and I wish my students could explore the Met themselves to see how the cultures compare and contrast through painting and sculpture. I find it fascinating how much you can learn about a culture simply by the art it produced! Not to mention how much you can differentiate and identify unique qualities that belong to each culture. To compensate not being able to take a field trip to the Met, I think I could make a PowerPoint slideshow or make handouts/posters to give the illusion of examining artifacts at a museum by including images with brief descriptions (omitting time and place). With an artifact from each major continent/civilization, learners could engage their prior knowledge and inquiry skills to make observations and identify which time and place the piece originated from. Additionally, they can characteristics that set them apart, such as clothing, hairstyles, and uses of artifacts, to make inferences about the landscape each one comes from. Fur coats might imply cold climates whereas loincloths might imply warm climates. Weapons reveal how advanced a civilization might be, comparing guns to spears. Learners can discuss the details that led them to their conclusions and discuss the importance of art in society, past and present.