Rethinking Art History

This group selected portraiture and really responded to images from This is Colossal. The images links to their Pinterest.

An image selected by a group who picked installation art. Click on the image to link to their Pinterest.

I love art history. It's so important for kids to be exposed to the vast body of historically and culturally significant work that humanity has produced. Really vast. So vast that it's impossible to show everything. So I normally pick and choose what to introduce to my students  based on what I have knowledge about and what I personally like. Not very choice based. 

This year we at Apex decided to try something different. Instead of my typical art history project, where kids research and present about an artist or movement, we're curating. 

The curator, you see, is responsible for grouping and sorting images. They make connections between pieces and make decision based on what they like or are inspired by. Instead of students passively learning about what I think is important they are actively making decisions about what value images have to them. 

This is a big task, so I provided a road map in to form of topics to investigate and some suggestions of artists who fall into those topics as a starting point. Students form groups and select their topic. They curate a collection of images using Pinterest, design a short presentation about their topic and create a game or activity to share with the class. 

So far I like what's happening, especially the energy around students finding art they're excited about. Here and here are the resources I showed them. Stay tuned for how the unit progresses :).