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Art Investigators: Exploring Modern Art

Ages 4 to 6, Kindergarten through Grade 3

As “art investigators,” students will look for clues, discover artists’ choices, and use their imaginations to explore modern and contemporary art. This tour will include simple art-making activities designed to help students think creatively and make personal connections to the works of art.  

Looking and Learning Skills

During three or four tour stops, students engage in activities—looking exercises, art-making activities, and small group work—that foster conversations and extend students’ understanding of the artists’ creative process. The following skills are promoted:

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

Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Royal-blue, sunshine-yellow, kelly-green, deep pink, and orange petal-like shapes and other geometric forms are arranged in a grid-like pattern against a cream-white field in this abstract, horizontal artwork. Applied to five joined, vertical canvases, the design is anchored at the center by a vertical blue pillar encasing a vertical row of four flower-like forms. Flanking the central column to either side, flowers are arranged in four rows of five blooms. Each bloom is a single, flat color, created with four cut pieces of painted paper. The arrangement of the colors vary so the flowers do not create a rigid pattern, though it seems like a pattern at first glance. The flowers are separated by clove-like forms creating X-shapes at the corner of each bloom. A stylized face takes the place of one flower near the center of each panel. Each oval face, eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn with black lines. Column-like forms in royal blue encase the composition along the left and right edges, and a row flicks like inverted commas lines the top edge. The flicks over the left half are blue and the flicks over the right half are green. The artist signed and dated the work with blue paint at the bottom right: “HM 53 53.”
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Henri Matisse, Large Decoration with Masks, 1953, gouache on paper, cut and pasted on white paper, mounted on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1973.17.1
Tall, sinuous, wine-red, plum-purple, and kelly-green curving forms fill this vertical abstract painting. The forms grow up from the bottom edge and converge into an S-shaped curl near the top of the canvas. A bright white line slices down the background beyond the petal at the top, and tapers to a point about three-quarters of the way down the composition. Two elongated, burgundy-red lobes emerge from black shadow at the lower left. One sliver of green grows up the center, and another flares out to our right. The top edge of the painting is lined with celery green at the middle deepening to grass green at the upper corners.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Georgia O'Keeffe, Jack-in-Pulpit Abstraction - No. 5, 1930, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1987.58.4
This abstract, geometric painting has been tipped on one corner to create a diamond form rather than a square. The surface of the canvas is crisscrossed by an irregular grid of black lines running vertically and horizontally like offset ladders. The black lines create squares and rectangles of different sizes, and the width of the lines vary slightly. One complete square sits at the center of the composition and is painted white. Other rectangles are incomplete, their corners sliced by the edge of the canvas, and each is a different shade of white with hints of pale blue and gray. The black grid creates triangular forms where it meets the angled edge of the canvas in some places, and some of these are filled with flat areas of color. A tomato-red triangle is placed to the left of the top center point, and a vibrant yellow triangle is to the left of the lower center point. A black triangle is next to it at the bottom center, and a cobalt-blue triangle is situated just below the right point. The painting is signed with the artist’s initials at the lower center: “PM.”
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Piet Mondrian, Tableau No. IV; Lozenge Composition with Red, Gray, Blue, Yellow, and Black, c. 1924/1925, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Gift of Herbert and Nannette Rothschild, 1971.51.1
We look across river at a bridge with a city skyline beyond in this stylized, horizontal landscape, which is painted entirely with broad, visible brushstrokes in vivid, saturated colors. The river spans nearly the width of the canvas, and the riverbank is lined to our left with a row of several buildings between us and the bridge. Those buildings are outlined with royal blue and filled in with mostly flat areas of color in coral pink, mint green, tangerine orange, and pinkish tan. Letters across the top of the building farthest from us reads “BREVER.” Eight boats are tied up at the foot of the buildings. The pointed hulls of three extend into the scene from the lower left corner, painted in marigold orange and outlined in cobalt blue. Five more boats, with rounded prows and hulls and painted with lapis blue and muted aqua, line up like a row of empty shoes. The bridge runs from behind the tallest building to our left across and off the canvas, and is painted with deep lapis blue with crimson-red Xes crisscrossing the span to suggest trestles. The front faces of the pilings below are also highlighted with red. The river fills most of the bottom half of the painting. The water to our left is painted as a field of coral pink with a few, short horizontal baby and cobalt-blue strokes, suggesting reflections of the boats and a bridge piling. A narrow band of kiwi green and sky blue lines the pink field to our right. Next to it, the water is painted as short, horizontal, disconnected strokes and dots mostly in bumblebee yellow with some strokes in bubblegum pink and pale burnt orange, all against the off white of the canvas below. The final zone, to our right, is more densely painted with short dashes in indigo, turquoise, and aqua blue. Beyond the bridge, the skyline is painted in silhouette with spiky spires to our left in mint green and a mass of shorter buildings in periwinkle blue to our right. Four clouds of pale yellow billow off the bridge in front of the skyline. The sky above is painted with short and long vertical strokes of butter yellow, rose pink, pale orange, and a few areas of watermelon pink. The artist signed the work with cobalt-blue paint near the lower left corner: “a derain.”
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, John Hay Whitney Collection, 1982.76.3

Logistical Information

Group Size: Up to 90 students
Length: 75 minutes; offered at 12:30 p.m., 1:00 p.m., and 2:15 p.m.
Meeting Location: East Building Atrium

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