Educator Resources

Learn about Black culture on Chicago’s South Side in the 1970s through Mikki Ferrill’s photographic project, The Garage (1970–80).

Look closely at Walter Ellison’s Train Station (1935) to learn about an important chapter in Chicago’s history, the Great Migration, and get new ideas for your own creativity.

Look closely at Woman with a Bird Cage and learn more about the artist, Rufino Tamayo, who took inspiration from his Zapotec heritage as well as international art movements in his work. Use the prompts provided to reflect on your own identity and influences.

Learn how Indigenous artist Kelly Church’s Sustaining Traditions-Digital Teachings (2018) engages her Ottawa/Potawatomi Anishinaabe heritage and knowledge of the ecology of the Great Lakes region. Drawing on her work as a black ash basket weaver, educator, and activist, you can reflect on your culture and the knowledge that you and your family hold.

Consider the painting Strange Worlds by Todros Geller while learning about the experiences of the many people who migrated to Chicago in the early 20th century in search of a better life. Research this history and reflect on the idea of belonging through art making.

What new understandings and ideas can we create when we observe, make connections, ask questions and reflect on works of art?

Creating new titles for works of art is a fun way to think creatively and make inferences—ideas based on reasoning and evidence—about what you see.

Some forms of poetry follow specific rules to create patterns and build meaning. A cinquain (pronounced SING-kane) is an unrhymed, five-line poem. Create a cinquain that teaches others about a work of art.

What if a work of art became a movie? Use your observation skills and imagination to design a poster that will make people want to run out and see this film.

Use your observations and imagination to bring to life a work of art.

Use clues from works of art to make inferences, or guesses based on evidence, about characters.

Use your close looking and comparison skills to consider the qualities of works of art and give awards.

This activity helps you describe the reactions and feelings you get from a work of art.

This activity helps you practice close looking and describing what you see.

Explore Joseph Cornell’s whimsical shadow box, Hôtel de la Duchesse-Anne, which he assembled using found materials from flea markets, bookstores, and souvenir shops. Learn more about the artist and use the prompts provided to think about what collections you’d include in a mini museum of you.

This resource includes potential approaches and talking points to support conversations about the human body and nudity in art.

Look closely at Peter Blume’s dream-like painting The Rock and consider how world events and the artist’s life experiences inspired the creation of this epic work. Use the questions and activities provided to reflect on and respond to the events of your time and place through artmaking.

Explore The Return of Odysseus (Homage to Pinturicchio and Benin) by artist Romare Bearden. The collage retells the epic tale of The Odyssey, celebrating the connections between The Odyssey’s characters and African-American history and culture. Engage in slow looking, learn more about the artist, and use stories of your own life to make art.

Take a deep look at Weaving by Diego Rivera to learn how Indigenous Mexican traditions and modern art movements influenced his creative practice. Using the activities provided, you can make weavings and portraits inspired by your heritage. Plus, explore collection works by Rivera’s peers.

Learn how Peruvian-American artist Kukuli Velarde depicts the complexity of her Indigenous heritage and the legacy of Spanish colonialism in her work La Linda Nasca. Using these activities, you can engage in slow looking and explore your own identity through art making.

Consider Georgia O’Keeffe’s perspective on New York’s skyline through The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y., and use the information and prompts provided to learn more about the artist, explore related work, and make art inspired by your own surroundings.

Learn about Chicago artist Margaret Burroughs, a Black artist, poet, educator, and activist whose work had a significant impact on Chicago’s cultural scene in the mid-20th century. After taking a close look at Burroughs’s Birthday Party, we hope you’ll be inspired to express yourself through printmaking.

Join museum conservators in their laboratories as they use science to investigate and care for works of art. 

Engage in slow looking with African American artist Hale Woodruff’s landscape painting Twilight and explore his experiments with form, color, and abstraction. After learning about Woodruff’s background, reflect on and respond creatively to the landscapes that are important to you.

This lesson plan explores Bisa Butler’s work The Safety Patrol.

This lesson plan explores the use of silk over time and connects students with Chinese art and culture.

Take a deep dive into artworks, classroom activities, and more.

Students will follow the influence of the material cobalt and the artistic tradition of blue and white pottery to consider how people and ideas move across space and time through trade, migration, colonization, and warfare.

Students will follow the phoenix as an artistic motif, cultural myth, and symbol to consider how people and ideas move across space and time through trade, migration, and warfare.

This lesson plan focuses on a single work of art from the museum’s global collection and provides sequential activities and related resources to explore diverse perspectives on US-Japan relations, cultural identity, and visual art.

This lesson plan focuses on a single work of art from the museum’s global collection and provides sequential activities and extensions that activate students’ critical and creative thinking skills.

Works of art can tell stories. This activity asks you to look carefully at works of art in order to find the key elements of a story.

Featuring six artworks from the Art Institute’s collection, each video from SmartHistory can be used as a resource in your teaching or shown in your classroom.

Take a short journey into the museum’s beloved Thorne Miniature Rooms.

Using three artworks from the Art Institute’s collection, these videos unpack a central theme and use innovative visual storytelling to highlight the choices artists made to shape form and meaning in their works.

What colors, shapes, and patterns do you see in this window? How would the world outside appear if you were looking through it?

What can you guess about the person who lives in this room? Use clues to learn about Vincent van Gogh and the unique decorations in his bedroom.

Play with texture, smooth lines, and cracked surfaces using Yoko Ono’s Mended Petal. Enjoy the read aloud link for “Inch by Inch” by Leo Lionni and discover how the inchworm can measure this tall sculpture and other objects.

Strike a pose! Explore movement and create your very own sculpture inspired by the work of Alberto Giacometti. Enjoy the read aloud link to make connections between this artwork and the book, “From Head to Toe” by Eric Carle.

This activity uses artworks and your observation skills to practice making inferences about an artwork’s meaning.

This dramatic canvas was painted by José Clemente Orozco during his self-imposed exile in the United States. A leader of the Mexican Mural movement of the 1920s and 1930s, Orozco painted Emiliano Zapata who was a symbol of the Mexican Revolution.

Discussions about works of art can take many forms. Keeping the following suggestions in mind will ensure that the discussion is meaningful and inclusive. 

This figure of Shukongojin looks down from his rock-like pedestal, imposing both a sense of awe and curiosity about the target of his aggressive presence.

In this work, Chicago-based artist Archibald J. Motley, Jr. depicts himself as a debonair yet serious artist, vibrant palette in hand. The traditional composition and lively colors offer a glimpse into the complexity of Motley himself.

This painting features the famous medieval legend of Saint George, who saved a princess about to be sacrificed to the dragon threatening her father’s kingdom.

Barbara Hepworth’s Two Figures represents the artist’s fusion of geometry and nature. The teak sculpture is composed of two vertical forms that are situated on a platform and punctuated by white-painted circular or oval concavities.

Barbara Kruger is known for works that provocatively integrate photographs and text. Her art reveals and challenges the ways in which images used in the commercial media often perpetuate stereotypes, objectify women, and encourage conformity.

In The Herring Net (1885), Winslow Homer captures the conflict between man and nature in his depiction of two fishermen hauling in a herring net amidst a stormy and powerful seascape.

Inspired by the Apollo missions, Thomas’s thickly painted patches of vivid color against a white ground creates a sensation of flickering light, which suggests the mysterious beauty of outer space and inspires a sense of wonder.

Charles Wilbert White depicted the dignity of rural labor with two powerful figures. The contours of scythe, hat brims, and forearms echo the curves of the horizon and clouds, portraying these workers in harmony with the landscape.

With its pulsating strands and slashes of bright color, this work evokes memories of bustling cities that Mitchell recalled from her travels in the American Midwest.

Artist Marc Chagall began working on his design for the windows in 1976, America’s bicentennial year, and constructed the windows as a tribute to the freedom of artistic expression enjoyed by the people of the United States.

This teaching packet includes an essay, discussion questions, activity ideas, a glossary, and images of three photographs from Dawoud Bey’s first significant body of work.