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Art Investigators: Faces and Places

Ages 4 to 6, Kindergarten through Grade 3

We will offer a selection of in-person and virtual field trips (using Zoom) for winter/spring 2024.

Requests for winter/spring field trips (January 8 – May 31, 2024) will be accepted from December 1, 2023 – April 5, 2024.

As "art investigators," students will look for clues and use their imaginations to explore portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life. During this interactive field trip, students will engage in careful-looking, simple art-making and small group work to foster connections to art.

Schedule a Field Trip

A small child stands facing us on a sun-dappled path that runs up the center of a garden dominated by towering yellow and burnt-orange sunflowers in this loosely painted, vertical scene. The light comes from our right so long, sea-green and plum-purple shadows cross the peach-colored path. The path is wide at the bottom center of the canvas and narrows as it reaches the steps of a house, beyond the garden. Close to us, four blue and white porcelain urns line the path, separating it from the grassy banks to either side. The urns are filled with tall stems with coral-pink and cardinal-red flowers. The child stands about halfway back along the path, where the garden transitions from grass to the banks of tall sunflowers. A few strokes in front of the child could be a small dog. Behind the child, a woman and another child stand on the steps. The woman wears a cornflower-blue and white dress, while both children have bare legs and wear white clothes and yellow hats. All three have indistinct facial features and peach-colored skin. The house spans with width of the composition. It has an amethyst-purple roofline with two chimneys, and the petal-pink walls have mango-yellow highlights. Windows are covered with blue latticework. Above the house, fluffy white clouds float against a vibrant blue sky. The artist signed and dated the painting at the lower right in dark blue, “Claude Monet 80.”

Claude Monet, The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil, 1881, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.45

Looking and Learning Skills

During four or five field trip stops, the following skills are promoted:

  • Observing, describing, and sharing ideas about the works of art.
  • Developing interpretations about art by drawing on clues, prior knowledge, and imagination.
  • Making personal connections to work of art.
  • Feeling a sense of belonging in the museum setting.

In-Person Field Trip Information

Group Size: Up to 90 students
Length: 60 minutes
Meeting Location: West Building Rotunda

Virtual Field Trip Information

Length: 60 minutes

Important Scheduling Information

Field trips must be scheduled at least four weeks in advance. Groups must contain at least 15 students.

Once your field trip has been scheduled, you will receive an email confirmation within ten business days.

Title I Bus Stipends

Funding for the cost of bus transportation is available for Title I schools that participate in our docent-led school field trips. For more information, please get in touch with Deirdre Palmer at [email protected] or (202) 842-6880, or use the application form.

Examples of Works Featured on this Field Trip

We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals miniscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn - On the Hudson River, 1860, oil on canvas, National Galery of Art, Gift of the Avalon Foundation, 1963.9.1
This sculpture is of a young girl in a ballet costume standing before us with her hands clasped behind her lower back, her head tipped back, and her chin thrust forward. The skin of her face, arms, chest, and legs are covered in bronze-brown wax, and her body faces us in this photograph. The sleeveless, putty-gray bodice of her costume fits tightly above a layered, fabric, pale, tea-brown tutu, and she wears ballet shoes. Her hair is pulled back but bangs sweep across her forehead, brushing her nearly closed, heavy eyelids. Her lips are slightly parted, and light catches the broad planes of her cheekbones. Her shoulders are drawn back by her pose, holding her hands behind her with arms straight, and her hips jut slightly forward. She stands with her right foot extended in front of her, with both feet turned out, parallel to each other. She stands on a square, wood platform.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, plaster cast possibly 1920/1921, after original wax modelled 1878-1881, painted plaster, fabric, metal armature, on plaster base, National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.62
A small child stands facing us on a sun-dappled path that runs up the center of a garden dominated by towering yellow and burnt-orange sunflowers in this loosely painted, vertical scene. The light comes from our right so long, sea-green and plum-purple shadows cross the peach-colored path. The path is wide at the bottom center of the canvas and narrows as it reaches the steps of a house, beyond the garden. Close to us, four blue and white porcelain urns line the path, separating it from the grassy banks to either side. The urns are filled with tall stems with coral-pink and cardinal-red flowers. The child stands about halfway back along the path, where the garden transitions from grass to the banks of tall sunflowers. A few strokes in front of the child could be a small dog. Behind the child, a woman and another child stand on the steps. The woman wears a cornflower-blue and white dress, while both children have bare legs and wear white clothes and yellow hats. All three have indistinct facial features and peach-colored skin. The house spans with width of the composition. It has an amethyst-purple roofline with two chimneys, and the petal-pink walls have mango-yellow highlights. Windows are covered with blue latticework. Above the house, fluffy white clouds float against a vibrant blue sky. The artist signed and dated the painting at the lower right in dark blue, “Claude Monet 80.”
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Claude Monet, The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil, 1880, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.45
More than a dozen light-skinned men, women, and children eat, drink, talk, and make music around a dancing couple under an arbor in this horizontal painting. Most of the people are dressed in muted tones of green, gray, and black. The patio-like space is enclosed by a railing along the back and a half wall to our right. Sage-green vines and leaves covering the roof-like trellis hang down. Ten men and women sit or stand closely around a long table along the left, next to the exterior wall of a red brick building. A woman sitting in a wooden chair at the end of the table closest to us wears a flax-yellow gown with a wide white collar and a starched white cap. She smiles up at the child she braces in her lap. The child stands and holds a toy in both hands and looks over one shoulder to our right. The child wears a carrot-orange gown with a white pinafore. Two men lean out of open windows at the far end of the brick building, and the people along the table drink, smile, or look on as a man in the center leads a woman by the hand to an open spot under the arbor. He wears a charcoal-gray suit, and a muted pink cap is pulled low over his eyes. He has a long, hooked nose, and light glints off teeth in his smiling mouth. The woman is pulled behind the man, so she stands flat-footed to our left of him. She faces our right but turns to looks at us from the corners of her dark eyes. Her light brown hair is gathered at the back of her head under a pearl-lined covering. She wears a dusty rose-pink gown with a sheer black shawl around her shoulders and white apron at her waist. Beyond the back rail, a man smiles widely as he balances a covered basket containing a gray chicken with one hand on his head. Nearby, a boy on our side of the rail talks with a little girl across the railing, who smiles back. Two men and a woman wearing a black head covering talk a short distance away. Close to us, a man, woman, and child in the lower right corner sit near two young men perched on the half wall, one playing a violin and the other a flute. A gleaming pewter ewer, a wooden barrel with a square opening, a white pipe, a terracotta bowl, broken eggs, a spoon, and an overturned pail of flowers lie scattered across the foreground of the patio. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “JSteen. 1663,” with the J and S overlapping.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple, 1663, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Widener Collection, 1942.9.81

Additional National Gallery Resources

Related Resources

Classroom Poster

The Farm (La masía) by Joan Miró

This bilingual poster of The Farm by Spanish artist Joan Miró is designed to be a primary source for you to display and use in your classroom. We hope this poster will generate rich conversations, probing questions, and great ideas among your students, which you can support and develop using the information and activities provided on the back of the poster. The poster also offers opportunities to develop content knowledge about a Spanish modern artist, his artistic process, and the idea of identity expressed through art.

Download Poster (PDF 882KB)