Field Trip

Every Picture Tells Many Stories

Uncover the many stories that works of art tell. During this field trip, students will learn to "read" works of art by considering multiple perspectives, characters, settings, and plots. They will engage in activities to imaginatively create narratives and dialogues inspired by the works of art.

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.
Jan Steen, The Dancing Couple, 1663, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.81

Grade Level

Subject

Duration

60-75 minutes

Language

Schedule a Field Trip

Looking and Learning Skills

During four or five field trip stops in the galleries, students engage in activities—such as looking exercises, small-group work, creative writing, and sketching—that foster conversations about works of art. On this field trip, 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 people in the paintings.
  • Comparing and connecting different paintings.
  • Reasoning with evidence from the works of art themselves—developing narratives based on what is seen in the work of art.
  • Taking new ideas learned from the field trip and connecting them to prior knowledge and experience.
  • In-Person Field Trip Information

    Group Size: Up to 90 students
    Length: 60 minutes for grade 3; 75 minutes for grades 4 through 12
    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.

  • Bus Transportation

    Bus transportation is available for DCPS (District of Columbia Public Schools) participating in our docent-led school field trips. Teachers should follow the guidelines to apply for bus transportation.

Examples of Works Featured on this Field Trip

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We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.”

Educational Resource:  Exploring Identity through Modern Art

How do artists draw on memories and experiences to create art that reflects their identities? How does an artist’s connection to place spark inspiration? Through guided looking, sketching, and writing activities, students will consider how artists explore identity through their art.