Educator Resources

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.

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 had become a symbol of the Mexican Revolution.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.