- Analyze the life of a famous historical figure. Students study the portraits of this person, musical pieces composed for the person, stories told about him or her, and films made in the individual’s honor, along with textual sources. What do visual representations tell them about this person? Students pretend to be this historical figure, choose an issue that they feel passionate about, and write a speech as this person. They can express their ideas through visual art, mime, or dramatics.
- Apply an art phenomenon to social/historical reality. Students act as reporters who travel back in time to cover important events in an artistic movement. They analyze a phenomenon (such as impressionism) and write a newspaper article about how this phenomenon responds to certain social, political, and historical conditions. What does impressionism tell the students about this time? How was the technique of impressionism a break from what had existed before, and how did this relate to the time?
- Investigate and analyze the contrasting views of two sides of a conflict, issue, or struggle. Students examine the art of 19th century Western artists versus that of African populations and grapple with the European belief in African “primitivism.” How are the colonizers and colonized represented, and why? What does this tell students about the artists and their world? How does the art of the colonized Africans express their social and political condition? Students write a position paper on 19th century European views of Africans and Africa, as seen through their art and writing (they can also do the reverse). They create an art gallery for student work that depicts their ideas.
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