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Every Picture Tells a Story
Grades 2 through 12

Paintings are more than just pictures in a frame—they are unfolding stories that contain multiple perspectives. During this tour, students will learn to "read" works of art by identifying characters, setting, and plot, and by imaginatively creating dialogues inspired by characters in the works of art.

Looking and Learning Skills

During three or four tour stops, students engage in activities—such as looking exercises, creative writing, and sketching—that foster conversations about works of art. Students will practice the following skills:

• Making and articulating careful observations;
• Formulating questions that demonstrate curiosity and engagement;
• Examining paintings from the perspectives of peers, the artists, and the figures in the paintings;
• Comparing and connecting different paintings;
• Reasoning with evidence from the works of art themselves—developing narratives based on what's seen in the work of art; and
• Connecting new ideas learned from the tour to prior knowledge and experience

Examples of Works Featured on Tour

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Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1985.29.1
A woman seeming to sit on the floor with her body angled to our left nearly fills this vertical painting. Her skin is the color of parchment in some areas, as around her eyes, chest, one hand, and the leg and foot we can see, while what seems like brown paint creeps up her neck to drip upwards around her cheeks and onto her forehead. The brown also drips down onto her cleavage, along one arm towards her wrist, and down the shin of her leg. Her right hand, on our left, is entirely brown. She holds her long hair up over her head with her brown hand in front of her face, looking at it with blue eyes and seeming to touch it with the other hand. Her hair is blonde with dark roots at her scalp, created with long, parallel brushstrokes. Her long nails and curling lips are scarlet. She wears an emerald green robe trimmed with white fur and a long strand of pearls that drape over her left arm, closer to us. She seems to sit on a cushion decorated with brown koi fish and stylized blue waves of water, but the exact arrangement of her legs is unclear. A stack of patterned pillows is piled behind her to our left, and comes up to her shoulder. Red circular forms behind her head are painted slate blue with deep brown shadows and red highlights. The words “BACK AND FORTH” are repeated in capital yellow letters edged with red in rows that fill the background.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Rozeal (formerly known as iona rozeal brown), afro.died, T., 2011, acrylic, pen, ink, marker, and graphite on birch plywood panel, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase with funds provided by the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2015.19.243
To our left, a young woman sits facing us on a low stone wall at the base of vertical, black bars of an iron fence and a young girl stands facing away from us to our right in this horizontal painting. Both have pale white skin. The woman looks directly at us with dark eyes as she holds an open book, a closed red fan, and a sleeping brown and white puppy in her lap. Her long auburn hair falls down over her shoulders. Her navy-blue dress is accented with white piping on the skirt, collar, and sleeves, and has three large, white buttons down the front and her black hat is adorned with two red poppies and a daisy. The girl wears a sleeveless white, knee-length dress belted with a marine-blue sash tied in a large bow at her back. The girl’s tawny-blond hair is pulled up and tied with a black ribbon. She raises her left hand to grasp the bar of the fence she faces. A bunch of uneaten green grapes lies on the low wall to our right. A plume of steam fills much of the space beyond the black fence, which spans the width of the painting and extends off the top edge. A few details are discernable beyond the fence, including a stone-gray building with two wooden doors to our left and a bridge along the right edge.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas, Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother, Louisine W. Havemeyer, 1956.10.1
Two large dogs approach a man lying unconscious and mostly buried in the snow in this horizontal painting. The head of the man lies towards us, at the lower center of the composition, and the dogs seem close to us. In the center of the painting is a large tan and white dog with short glossy fur and floppy ears, its jowly mouth hanging open and pink tongue visible. It paws at the snow partially covering most of the body of a man wearing an olive-green coat with a fur collar and white shirt, directly beneath the dog. The dog looks up toward our right, and its body and white tipped tail recede diagonally into the picture toward the left. There is a red blanket with black edging thrown over the dog’s back and the hound wears a wide, fur-lined silver collar ornamented with metalwork lions and bells. The second dog, a dark brown brindle color, sits to the immediate left of the first dog. It gazes downward toward the center at the prone person and bends its head down to lick a bare pale, pink hand that protrudes from underneath the snow. The brindle dog wears a small barrel around its neck on a brown buckled leather collar. The man’s dark brown hair falls over the snow. His pale grey face is upward, and his shoulders are visible while his arms splay out, and the rest of his body, extending into the picture, is snow covered. The man’s eyes are closed. His right hand (on our right also), with a tan leather glove, reaches out toward us from the snow, while a green velvet cap with a red ribbon lies underneath the hand. The scene is enclosed by large, angular steel and blue-grey boulders and rock formations, with two craggy pine trees above. Beyond lies a mountain landscape with a V-shaped pass at the center top framed by the steep ascent of jagged, snowy hillsides and a sliver of blue sky at the very top. At the right in the middle distance, three bearded men wearing black caps and what appear to be clerical robes hurry toward the dogs. The nearest of the clerics holds up a staff with a cross on the top and facing toward the left side of the painting, waves or signals to someone beyond view.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Sir Edwin Landseer, Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler, 1820, oil on canvas, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2019.120.1
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Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Gordon Parks, Washington, D.C. Government Charwoman (American Gothic), July 1942, printed later, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.104

Logistical Information

Length: 30, 45, or 60 minutes

Additional Gallery Resources

Uncovering America

Art in the Classroom Poster
"The Railway" by Edouard Manet

Download poster (PDF 522kb)

Manet’s The Railway gives us a glimpse of Parisian life in the 19th century. The poster offers information and activities to encourage looking at, thinking about, and interpreting the work of art. It can be used flexibly and is suitable for small-group or whole-class work.
Art in the Classroom Poster
The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial, 1900 by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Download poster (PDF 685KB)

The poster offers information and activities to encourage students to consider the perspectives of a famous regiment of African American Civil War soldiers through careful looking at art images and use of creative-writing prompts. It explores the artistic challenges of creating a meaningful memorial and tasks students with conceptualizing their own memorials.

Learn more about how the poster links to Common Core State Standards (PDF 71KB).
The Farm (La masía), 1921-1922 by Joan Miró

Download poster (PDF 882KB)

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 that this poster will generate rich conversations, probing questions, and great ideas among your students, which you will be able to 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.

Create a work of art inspired by your personal description and The Farm. Download the writing and grid template (PDF 46KB).

Learn more about how the poster links to Common Core State Standards (PDF 77KB).

Schedule a Tour

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

Once your tour has been scheduled, you will receive an email confirmation in 10 business days.

Watch a video (grades 1-4) or download a presentation (grades 4-12) (PPT, 4MB) to show your students what to expect on their tour. Please review museum policies, location, parking, accessibility, security, lunch options, and other important visitor information.

Our tour scheduler is available to answer questions on Monday through Wednesday between 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. (September through May). Please contact her at (202) 842-6249 [email protected].

Also see our Frequently Asked Questions about School Tours.

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