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Teacher Workshops

Workshops are designed to help teachers find meaning and enjoyment in the visual arts that they can share with their students. These programs introduce art in the Gallery’s collection and in special exhibitions, explore interdisciplinary curriculum connections, and model methods for teaching with art. All programs include teaching resource materials for educators to take home.

Teachers of all subjects and grade levels (pre-kindergarten through grade 12), homeschoolers, and pre-service educators are welcome. For more information, please email us at [email protected].

Upcoming Programs

Philomé Obin, President Tiresias Sam Entering Cap-Haïtien, 1958, oil on fiberboard, Gift of Kay and Roderick Heller, 2023.44.6

Virtual workshop for all educators
Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti – An Exhibition Overview & Strategies for Teachers
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
4:00–5:30 p.m. EST 

Register here

Description:

Learn about the most celebrated Haitian artists of the 20th century and how their works influenced generations of African American artists. Develop a greater understanding, through observing Haitian modern art, for some of the ways that Haiti impacted culture in the African Diaspora.

In this 90-minute, live virtual workshop, we will explore the National Gallery’s special exhibition Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti and apply thinking and discussion strategies featured in the online courses Teaching Critical Thinking through Art with the National Gallery of Art and Teaching Complex Thinking through Art with the National Gallery of Art. 

Join senior lecturer Nathalie Ryan for an overview of Spirit & Strength, highlighting themes in Haitian modern art. Then participate with online course instructors and senior museum educators Julie Carmean and Liz Diament to use a thinking routine for in-depth exploration of an artwork from the exhibition. A time for “Q&A” will be available for participants at the end of the interactive session. 

This workshop is sure to be both practically informative and personally enriching. The content presented can be easily applied in the classroom during February’s Black History Month, not only in art classrooms, but also in social studies and language arts lessons.

Once you register, you will receive a link to the session. Those who attend live will receive a letter verifying their professional development participation at the close of the session.

Please note: The format of these programs is an online Zoom meeting. This means that your image and voice may be recorded if you choose to turn on your camera and/or microphone. By registering, you give consent for the National Gallery of Art to use that recording in any media, including on the Gallery’s website and social media accounts, as well as in a noncommercial educational online course that will be made available to the general public on a third-party platform.

Past Programs

To our left, a young woman sits facing us on a low stone wall at the base of the 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 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 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 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 can be made out beyond the fence, including a stone-gray building with two wooden doors to our left and a bridge along the right edge.

Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas, Gift of Horace Havemeyer in memory of his mother, Louisine W. Havemeyer, 1956.10.1

Virtual workshop for all educators
Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment – An Exhibition Overview & Strategies for Teachers
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
4:00–5:30 p.m. EST Register here

Description:

How did impressionism begin? How might we help our students grapple with the broad themes around this groundbreaking movement? Themes such as modernism, industrialization, revitalization through creativity, and capturing glimpses of the human experience connect not only to art curriculum, but also to social studies and language arts content across grade levels. 

In this 90-minute, live virtual workshop, we will explore the National Gallery’s special exhibition Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment and apply thinking and discussion strategies featured in the online courses Teaching Critical Thinking through Art with the National Gallery of Art and Teaching Complex Thinking through Art with the National Gallery of Art. 

Join senior lecturer Jennifer Riddell for an overview of Paris 1874. Then participate with course instructors and senior museum educators Julie Carmean and Liz Diament to use a thinking routine in-depth with two paintings from the exhibition. A time for “Q&A” will be available for participants at the end of the interactive session. This professional development workshop is sure to be both useful and personally enriching.

Once you register, you will receive a link to the session. Those who attend live will receive a letter verifying their professional development participation at the close of the session.

Missouri Pettway, Path through the Woods, 1971, polyester knit, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons’ Permanent Fund and Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, 2020.28.16

On-Site Workshop for Local Educators
Called to Create: Connecting Art and Writing, with Poet Gayle Danley​
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
4:00–7:15 p.m.
Register here

Description:

Join fellow educators for a special evening program to explore the Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South exhibition. Learn to use poetry to incorporate these powerful works of art into your classroom.

This workshop will begin with refreshments in the Education Studio on the Concourse, followed by a slide overview of Called to Create by senior educator Nathalie Ryan. We will then proceed to the exhibition space in the East Building, where we will engage in slow looking at the artworks, hear a poetry performance by teaching artist and award-winning slam poet Gayle Danley, and participate with her in a poetry-writing exercise you can use in your classroom. We’ll also send you home with educational resources you can share with your students.

This program is open to all local educators. It is free of charge but requires advance registration. Please plan to arrive before 5:00 p.m., when the museum closes to the public, as late entry cannot be accommodated. 

Mary Lee Bendolph, Blocks and Strips, 2002, wool, cotton, and corduroy, Patrons' Permanent Fund and Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, 2020.28.1

Virtual workshop for local educators
​Integrating Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South into Classroom Practice
Thursday, January 26, 2023
4:00–5:30 p.m.
Register here

Description:

Join National Gallery of Art museum educators and classroom teacher Sean Felix, along with an online community of education professionals across the United States and global participants Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Teaching Critical Thinking through Art —for a live, virtual teacher workshop and MOOC Meetup session that explores the possibilities of integrating artworks from the National Gallery’s collection into classroom practice.

This winter 2023 virtual teacher workshop will offer an overview of Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South, a special exhibition featuring 40 sculptures, assemblages, paintings, reliefs, quilts, and drawings from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Despite racism and other forms of discrimination, all of the artists featured in the exhibition drew on deep cultural and spiritual traditions to create some of the finest art of our time.

In this workshop, a local educator from Washington, DC, Sean Felix, will share his experiences applying works of art from the Called to Create exhibition in his middle school social studies classroom. Sean will demonstrate how he used a thinking routine from Harvard’s Project Zero to foster a deeper exploration of one work in the exhibition and connect to his curriculum. Through Sean’s documentation of student thinking about the work of art, participants will see how the students’ learning process evolved. Together, participants will discuss their observations of Sean’s teaching and how they might apply works from the exhibition into their own teaching practice. Digital resources for classroom application will be provided.

Questions about the program? Email Jessica Metzger at [email protected].

Shown from about the waist up, a woman with smooth, pale skin sits in a chair facing our right in front of a canvas on an easel in this vertical portrait. She leans onto her right elbow, which rests on the seat back. She turns her face to look at us, lips slightly parted. Her dress has a black bodice and a deep rose-pink skirt and sleeves. She wears a translucent white cap over her hair, which has been tightly pulled back. A stiff, white, plate-like ruff encircles her neck and reaches to her shoulders. She holds a paintbrush in her right hand and clutches about twenty brushes, a wooden paint palette, and a rag in her left hand, at the bottom right of the canvas. The painting behind her shows a man wearing robin's egg-blue and playing a violin.

Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, c. 1630, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, 1949.6.1

Virtual workshop for local educators
Exploring the Complexity of Characters through Art and Creative Writing​
Thursday, November 10, 2022
4:00–5:30 p.m.

Description:

Join National Gallery of Art museum educators and award-winning playwright Mary Hall Surface—along with an online community of education professionals across the United States and global participants from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Teaching Critical Thinking through Art —for a live, virtual teacher workshop and MOOC Meetup session, taking a deep dive into strategies for connecting works of art to classroom practice.

In this fall 2022 virtual teacher workshop, Mary Hall Surface will invite participants into a process that demonstrates how close looking at Self-Portrait by 17th century Dutch artist Judith Leyster can invite students to uncover complexity in historical characters and in themselves. Through a series of short creative writing prompts, including imagined monologues, participants will explore how characters might define themselves and how the world might perceive them. Each step of this interactive process will foster rich observation, curiosity, and expansive perspective-taking and will lead to considering self-identity. Participants will learn how this process can be adapted across the curriculum for characters in literature, media, and contemporary events. Digital resources for classroom application will be provided.

Made with mostly square or rectangular pieces of patterned paper in shades of asparagus and moss green, sky blue, tan, and ash brown, a man with brown skin sits in the center of this horizontal composition with a second person over his shoulder, in the upper left corner of this collage. The man’s facial features are a composite of cut-outs, mostly in shades of brown and gray, as if from black-and white photographs, and he smokes a cigarette. He sits with his body angled slightly to our right and he looks off in that direction, elbows resting on thighs and wrists crossed. His button-down shirt and pants, similarly collaged, are mottled with sky blue and white. One foot, on our right, is created with a cartoonish, shoe-shaped, black silhouette. The paper used for the other foot seems to have been scraped and scratched, creating the impression that that foot is bare. A tub, made of the same blue and white paper of the man’s suit, sits on the ground to our left, in the lower corner. The man sits in front of an expanse made up of green and brown pieces of paper patterned with wood grain, which could be a cabin. In a window in the upper left, a woman’s face, her features similarly collaged, looks out at us. One dark hand, large in relation to the people, rests on the sill with the fingers extended down the side of the house. The right third of the composition is filled collaged scraps of paper patterned to resemble leafy trees. Closer inspection reveals the form of a woman, smaller in scale than the other two, standing in that zone, facing our left in profile near a gray picket fence. She has a brown face, her hair wrapped in a patterned covering, and she holds a watermelon-sized, yellow fruit with brown stripes. Several blue birds and a red-winged blackbird fly and stand nearby. Above the woman and near the top of the composition, a train puffs along the top of what we read as the tops of trees. The artist signed the work in black letters in the upper right corner: “romare bearden.”

Romare Bearden, Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967, collage of various papers with charcoal, graphite and paint on paper mounted to canvas, Paul Mellon Fund, 2001.72.1

On-site workshop for local educators
Connecting to Afro-Atlantic Histories
April 28, 2022
4:00–7:00 p.m.

Description:

Join fellow educators for a special evening program to explore the Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibition. In the exhibition space—surrounded by powerful works of art—you’ll discuss, brainstorm, and exchange ideas with colleagues from across disciplines. You’ll also learn techniques for using art as a platform to address difficult topics with your students.

We’ll send you home with a resource packet that includes art reproductions, a poster, conversation starters, and additional information about the exhibition. Refreshments will be served.

This program is open to all DC-area educators. It is free of charge, but we do require advance registration.

Jacob Lawrence, Lou Stovall, Amistad Research Center, Toussaint at Ennery, 1989, color screenprint on wove paper, Gift of Alexander M. and Judith W. Laughlin, 1993.30.2

MOOC Meetup: Live via Zoom
Connecting to Afro-Atlantic Histories: Pictures of Practice from Local DC Educators
Thursday, April 7, 2022
4:00–5:30 p.m. ET

Description:

Join National Gallery of Art museum educators—along with an online community of education professionals across the United States and global participants from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Teaching Critical Thinking through Art—for a live, virtual teacher workshop and MOOC Meetup session for a deep dive into strategies for connecting works of art to classroom practice.

This spring 2022 virtual teacher workshop, the third of a series of three, will offer an overview of our upcoming special exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories, which explores the vast range of historical experiences and artistic expressions of Black and African people since the 17th century.

In this workshop, local educators from Washington, DC, will share their experiences applying works of art from the exhibition in their teaching contexts. Participants will then use a thinking routine from Harvard’s Project Zero to foster a deeper exploration of one work in the exhibition and will discuss ways to apply the documentation that the local teachers present. Registrants will receive access to digital teaching resources related to the exhibition. While all educators are welcome, this workshop will be especially relevant to those who teach K–12 and social studies curricula.

The spruce-green silhouette of a broad-shouldered man standing among palm fronds looks up at a faint red star against a field of green circles radiating out from the horizon in this abstracted vertical painting. The scene is made with mostly flat areas of color to create silhouettes in shades of slate and indigo blue, lemon-lime and pea green, plum purple, and brick red. To our right of center, the man faces our left in profile. His eye is a slit and he has tight curly hair. The position of his feet, standing on a coffin-shaped, brick-red box, indicate his back is to us. He stands with legs apart and his arms by his sides. Terracotta-orange shackles around his wrists are linked with a black chain. A woman to our left, perhaps kneeling, holds her similarly shackled hands up overhead. A line of shackled people with their heads bowed move away from this pair, toward wavy lines indicating water in the distance. The water is pine green near the shore and lightens, in distinct bands, to asparagus green on the horizon. On our left, two, tall pea-green ships sail close to each other at the horizon, both titled at an angle to our right. Concentric circles radiate out from the horizon next to the ships to span the entire painting, subtly altering the color of the silhouettes it encounters. To our left, a buttercup-yellow beam shines from the red star in the sky across the canvas, overlapping the man’s face. Spruce-blue palm trees grow to our right while plum-purple palm fronds and leaves in smoke gray and blood red frame the painting along the left corners and edge. The artist signed the painting in the lower right, in black, “AARON DOUGLAS.”

Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase and partial gift from Thurlow Evans Tibbs, Jr., The Evans-Tibbs Collection), 2014.79.17

MOOC Meetup: Live via Zoom
Connecting to Afro-Atlantic Histories: An Overview for the Classroom
Thursday, March 10, 2022
4:00–5:30 p.m. ET

Description:

Join National Gallery of Art museum educators—along with an online community of education professionals across the United States and global participants from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Teaching Critical Thinking through Art—for a live, virtual teacher workshop and MOOC Meetup session for a deep dive into strategies connecting works of art to classroom practice.

This spring 2022 virtual teacher workshop, the first of a series of three, will offer an overview of our upcoming special exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories, which explores the vast range of historical experiences and artistic expressions of Black and African people since the 17th century.

In this workshop, a lecturer will share an overview of the exhibition, describing the six main themes and highlighting key works of art that can be shown digitally in classrooms. Participants will then use a thinking routine from Harvard’s Project Zero to foster a deeper discussion of one work and consider how the exhibition can be applied across teaching contexts. Registrants will receive access to digital teaching resources related to the exhibition. While all educators are welcome, this workshop will be especially relevant to those who teach middle school, high school, and social studies curricula.

A man and a woman with black skin stand in a sage and olive-green boat that comes toward us on a wavy, dripping band of cobalt blue that spans the lower edge of this loosely hanging, square canvas. The word “WANDERER” is written in white capital letters along the bow of the boat. Closer to us, in the boat, a woman is seen from the hips up. An oval, cloud-like form covers her torso, shoulders, and the area behind her head. It is white with rose-pink swirls, and has a few black lines creating scallops around the edge. A black shape at her waist, just over a cobalt-blue skirt, could indicate that at least one arm is bent behind her back. The penis, thighs, and knees of a man are seen between the boat and the triangular, pale lilac-purple sail. The sail is painted with long, curling strokes of violet purple up its center. A long, white pennant with two gold stars flutters from the boat’s burgundy-red mast, which has a crosspiece just below the pennant. The water is painted with strokes of royal blue, which partially drip over a white skull at the lower center. The boat is set against a background layered in washes of white, shell pink, and baby blue, with swirls and thin strokes of brick red scattered across it. A yellow sun outlined in deeper gold peeks above the horizon in the lower left, and is repeated with more orbs that together make an arc that curves to the upper right corner. A few geometric line drawings hover next to the woman, on our left, such as a compass-like cross with a crosshatched oval at each end. A black number

Kerry James Marshall, Voyager, 1992, acrylic and collage on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women’s Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2014.79.52

MOOC Meetup: Live via Zoom
Connecting to Afro-Atlantic Histories: Culturally Responsive Teaching with Art
Thursday, March 24, 2022
4:00–5:30 p.m. ET

Description:

Join National Gallery of Art museum educators—along with an online community of education professionals across the United States and global participants from the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Teaching Critical Thinking through Art—for a live, virtual teacher workshop and MOOC Meetup session for a deep dive into strategies for connecting works of art to classroom practice.

This spring 2022 virtual teacher workshop, the second of a series of three, will offer an overview of our upcoming special exhibition Afro-Atlantic Histories, which explores the vast range of historical experiences and artistic expressions of Black and African people since the 17th century.

In this workshop, Maria Akinyele, a professional development leader in culturally responsive teaching and Black history, will present how to teach the themes of the exhibition with sensitivity and awareness. Participants will then use a thinking routine from the Arts as Civic Commons project at Harvard’s Project Zero to foster a deeper discussion of one work in the exhibition and consider how art can support culturally responsive teaching. Registrants will receive access to digital teaching resources related to the exhibition. While all educators are welcome, this workshop will be especially relevant to those who teach middle school, high school, and social studies curricula.

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