Educational Resources

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Featured educational series

Teaching resources to deeply explore artworks, artists, artistic media and artistic styles.

Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.

Educational Resource Series:  Who Am I?: Self-Portraits in Art and Writing

Designed to help middle school students begin to answer the important question "Who Am I?," these lessons use self-portraits from the National Gallery of Art's collection to inspire students to create their own self-portraits, poems, speeches, and letters.

A woman wearing a breastplate and helmet over a toga stands to our left on a platform, gesturing with one arm extended to a group of about a dozen soldiers gathered around her in this horizontal painting. The woman has pale white skin and most of the soldiers have ruddy complexions. The woman stands with her body facing us but she turns her head to our right, looking toward but not at the knot of soldiers clustered there. She leans on her right elbow, on our left, resting on the flat top of a broken column, and she holds a scepter in that hand. Her other arm is raised and her fingers are extended except for the index finger and thumb, which touch to make a circle. Her gold helmet is encrusted with gems and a white plume issues from the top. Her red and gold cloak is fastened around her neck and falls open to reveal her armor and sandal-clad feet. A shield rests on the platform near her feet, and other pieces of armor are scattered on the dirt ground near the platform. A young boy with chestnut-brown curls holds her cloak behind her and to our right. In the lower left corner of the painting, one soldier sits on the edge of the platform, and he twists and looks up at the woman. Several soldiers standing in a group to our right carry shields, banners, and halberds, which are tall, ax-like weapons. The men wear helmets and breastplates, and cloaks in canary yellow, crimson red, and ivory white. The man closest to us stands with his back to us, and he looks over his shoulder at the woman. An animal skin wraps around his shoulders and the head of the animal drapes over his head. More soldiers and tents in the middle distance are painted in almost monochromatic tones of peanut brown and taupe. The sky above is blue with a few white clouds, except for a band of soft yellow along the horizon.

Educational Resource Series:  Heroes & Heroines

Students will look at works of art depicting military, religious, political, and everyday heroes and heroines and discuss their lives and the effects of their deeds. Teachers can use these lessons to introduce or examine in depth the concept of heroism through discussions of heroic actions and character.

Two angular, cream-white buildings flanking a central, stylized tree are surrounded by brown soil, small animals, and farmhouse objects like watering cans and buckets beneath a clear, azure-blue sky in this square landscape painting. We look straight onto the buildings and slightly down onto the earth in front of us. About a third of the way up the composition, the horizon is lined with trees and mountains in the deep distance. The long, spindly branches of the central tree nearly reach the top edge of the painting and abstracted, sickle-shaped leaves are silhouetted against the sky so no leaves overlap. The far edge of the whitewashed structure to our left is cropped. The façade is pierced by two small rectangular windows and an arched hatch at the top under a winch. The back end of a horse is visible through an open door at the bottom center. Horizontal bands in front of the building suggest furrows in plowed earth, and a single stalk of corn grows up into the scene, seeming close to us. A pen protected by netting stretches out in front of the second structure, to our right of center. That wood-frame building has a triangular peaked roof, and the left half is open, like a lean-to. A goat, rooster, birds, and several rabbits occupy the pen. Watering cans, buckets and pails, a hoe, newspaper, lizard, and snail are spaced around the buildings. A tiny stylized person, perhaps a baby, appears in the distance between the buildings near a well where a woman works. A covered wagon, a round mill, trees, and plants fill the rest of the space between the buildings. A disk-like moon hangs in the sky to the right of the tree. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, "Miro. 1921-22."

Educational Resource Series:  Art Tales for Pre-K

Need ideas for how to talk about art with your little ones? In each box below, you can explore artworks with your children, read books with related themes, and try your hand at making some art of your own.

We look across and down into a valley with a person sitting near a tall tree and a train puffing smoke beyond, all enclosed by a band of mountains in the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us, several broken, jagged tree stumps are spaced across the painting’s width. A little distance away and to our left, the person wears a yellow, broad-brimmed hat, red vest, and gray pants. He reclines propped on his left elbow near a walking path beside a tall, slender tree with golden leaves. The green meadow stretching in front of him is dotted with tree stumps cut close to the ground. Beyond the meadow, puffs of white smoke trail behind a long steam locomotive that crosses a bridge spanning a tree-filled ravine, headed to our left. The ravine creates a diagonal line across the canvas, moving subtly away from us to our left. The train has climbed out of the valley, away from a cluster of brick-red buildings. The most prominent structure is a train roundhouse, a large building with a high, domed roof to the right of the tracks. Smoke rises from chimneys on long, warehouse-like buildings, and a steeple and smaller structures suggest a church and homes to our left. Hazy in the distance, a row of mountains lines the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The sky above deepens from pale, shell pink over the mountains to watery, pale blue above. The artist signed the work in tiny letters in the lower left corner: “G. Inness.”

Educational Resource Series:  Art and Ecology

Artists are often particularly keen observers and precise recorders of the physical conditions of the natural world.

Educational Resource Series:  The Elements of Art

The goal of this unit is to introduce students to the basic elements of art (color, line, shape, form, and texture) and to show students how artists use these elements in different ways in their work. In the unit, students will answer questions as they look carefully at paintings and sculpture to identify the elements and analyze how they are used by different artists.

From high above the earth, we look onto a dramatically lit scene with a man falling from a horse-drawn chariot in midair, surrounded by eleven women against a bank of clouds in this horizontal painting. All of the people have pale skin and are illuminated by a bright burst of sunlight streaming across the scene from the upper right corner. The man is covered only by a burgundy-red sash that wraps across his groin and around one shoulder. He careens headfirst from the U-shaped, golden chariot with his chest facing us, arms flung overhead and legs splayed, to our right of center. The tumble of bodies around him includes four horses, three ivory white and one gray, and the eleven women, who are either nude or dressed in robes of parchment white, tan, slate blue, butterscotch yellow, steel gray, or rose pink. The women all have blond or brown hair, and some have wings like butterflies, patterned with circles and stripes. They fall alongside the man or float above the wreckage, their robes and hair billowing. Some of the women hold the red reins of the horses, though some of the reins stop abruptly or are painted over so they appear as dark lines beneath the surface. The nickel-gray clouds surround and support some of the women in front of a hazy circular arch curving up the left side of the composition. Peeks of sky around the action are deep aqua blue, and vibrant orange flames lick up from the earth in the lower right.

Educational Resource Series:  Greco-Roman Origin Myths

Mythology is a powerful vehicle for teaching students about symbols and the ways people have sought to explain their relationships to nature and to each other. Teachers can use these lessons and works of art to introduce or examine the role of myths in explaining human customs, mysteries about nature, or the reasons why things exist in the world.

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This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.

Art Tales: Not a Box

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.”

Art Investigators: Faces and Places

Sheer, vertical, cliffs, brightly lit in cream white and rust orange by the low sun, tower over a band of people riding horses into the distance in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The glowing cliffs dominate the upper right quadrant of the painting. They lighten from burnt orange along the jagged tops to flame orange down the steep sides, and are and warm, parchment white near the earth. One tall, narrow promontory to our right looms over a range of lower, rounded cliffs. As the cliffs move into the distance, they are shrouded with a lavender-purple haze. The land closest to us dips into a shallow valley at the bottom center of the composition, leading away from us. The dirt-packed earth is dotted with pine-green, scrubby bushes and vegetation and a grove of low, gnarled trees a short distance to our right. One chestnut-brown horse walks along the path at the bottom center of the composition, lagging behind a cluster of at least two dozen horses and riders winding into the distance. The horses range from ivory white to tawny brown and charcoal gray. The riders are loosely painted so some details are indistinct, but they all seem to have brown skin and dark hair. They wear feathered headdresses and garments in teal blue, fawn brown, or golden yellow. They ride over a low hill toward a crystal-blue river, and then back along a flat expanse toward a row of minuscule, triangular tepees lining the horizon in the deep distance. The horizon comes halfway up the composition, and the tepees are backed by a row of rose-pink, flat-topped cliffs. A pale yellow disk hangs low in the sky, over the distant cliffs. The sky above deepens from soft, lilac purple along the horizon to ice and sapphire blue along the top. A few wispy clouds are burnished orange in the sunlight. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “TYMoran 1881,” with the T, Y, and M overlapping to make a monogram.

American Connections

Two angular, cream-white buildings flanking a central, stylized tree are surrounded by brown soil, small animals, and farmhouse objects like watering cans and buckets beneath a clear, azure-blue sky in this square landscape painting. We look straight onto the buildings and slightly down onto the earth in front of us. About a third of the way up the composition, the horizon is lined with trees and mountains in the deep distance. The long, spindly branches of the central tree nearly reach the top edge of the painting and abstracted, sickle-shaped leaves are silhouetted against the sky so no leaves overlap. The far edge of the whitewashed structure to our left is cropped. The façade is pierced by two small rectangular windows and an arched hatch at the top under a winch. The back end of a horse is visible through an open door at the bottom center. Horizontal bands in front of the building suggest furrows in plowed earth, and a single stalk of corn grows up into the scene, seeming close to us. A pen protected by netting stretches out in front of the second structure, to our right of center. That wood-frame building has a triangular peaked roof, and the left half is open, like a lean-to. A goat, rooster, birds, and several rabbits occupy the pen. Watering cans, buckets and pails, a hoe, newspaper, lizard, and snail are spaced around the buildings. A tiny stylized person, perhaps a baby, appears in the distance between the buildings near a well where a woman works. A covered wagon, a round mill, trees, and plants fill the rest of the space between the buildings. A disk-like moon hangs in the sky to the right of the tree. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, "Miro. 1921-22."

Artist as Experimenter

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.”

Art Investigators: Exploring Modern Art

Sheer, vertical, cliffs, brightly lit in cream white and rust orange by the low sun, tower over a band of people riding horses into the distance in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The glowing cliffs dominate the upper right quadrant of the painting. They lighten from burnt orange along the jagged tops to flame orange down the steep sides, and are and warm, parchment white near the earth. One tall, narrow promontory to our right looms over a range of lower, rounded cliffs. As the cliffs move into the distance, they are shrouded with a lavender-purple haze. The land closest to us dips into a shallow valley at the bottom center of the composition, leading away from us. The dirt-packed earth is dotted with pine-green, scrubby bushes and vegetation and a grove of low, gnarled trees a short distance to our right. One chestnut-brown horse walks along the path at the bottom center of the composition, lagging behind a cluster of at least two dozen horses and riders winding into the distance. The horses range from ivory white to tawny brown and charcoal gray. The riders are loosely painted so some details are indistinct, but they all seem to have brown skin and dark hair. They wear feathered headdresses and garments in teal blue, fawn brown, or golden yellow. They ride over a low hill toward a crystal-blue river, and then back along a flat expanse toward a row of minuscule, triangular tepees lining the horizon in the deep distance. The horizon comes halfway up the composition, and the tepees are backed by a row of rose-pink, flat-topped cliffs. A pale yellow disk hangs low in the sky, over the distant cliffs. The sky above deepens from soft, lilac purple along the horizon to ice and sapphire blue along the top. A few wispy clouds are burnished orange in the sunlight. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “TYMoran 1881,” with the T, Y, and M overlapping to make a monogram.

Art Tales: Sky Color

Breaking the Rules

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.

Every Picture Tells Many Stories

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Vividly colored, curved and straight-edged geometric shapes are piled and layered against a background of chalk white in this horizontal abstract composition. The paint is applied thickly with visible brush strokes. The shapes that fill the canvas are painted in flat areas of canary and buttercup yellow, cobalt blue, beet and brick red, pumpkin orange, kelly green, white, or black. Three vertical, cinnamon-brown bands are spaced along a sky-blue square, which nearly spans the left half of the composition. The tall brown forms can be read as masts while some of the other shapes can be the water, sails, rigging, anchors, and the forms of ships.

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Art Around the Corner

Art Around the Corner is a set of programs that partners the National Gallery of Art with D.C-area Title I elementary schools.

From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas. Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us. Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left. She holds the parasol with both hands, and her brown hair is covered with a hat. Long strokes of white paint across her face suggest a veil fluttering in the breeze. The tall grass she stands in is dotted with buttercup yellow and plum purple, and she casts a long diagonal shadow along the grass toward us. The young boy seems to stand on the other side of the hill, since the grass and flowers comes up to his waist. He wears a white jacket and pale yellow straw hat. His arms are by his sides, and he seems to look off into the distance to our left. A sunny blue sky behind the people is dotted with bright blue clouds. The painting is created with loose brushstrokes throughout, and they are especially choppy in the clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in royal-blue letters at the lower right: “Claude Monet 75.”

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Our family programs are based on a philosophy of slowing down, focusing on one work of art, developing observation and thinking skills, inspiring curiosity and wonder, and fostering collaboration between children and adults. All Family Programs are free, and participation is on a first-come, first-served basis.