ART IS A POWERFULPATHWAY FOR LEARNING

Anders Elias Jorgensen

Danish (1838–1876)
View of Honolulu from Punchbowl,
1875, Oil on canvas

Curriculum Connections
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)Arts Integration

Simple ways to engage with art

To go beyond VTS and connect artwork to your classroom
curriculum, you can use these more directed prompts.

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is anapproach that encourages students to lookclosely, to inquire and to develop insights
grounded in evidence from the artwork.
VTS works well as a first step towards
exploring an artwork.
In this simple but powerful method, theteacher facilitates a discussion using thefollowing questions:
What is going on in this painting?
What do you see that makes
you say that?
What more can you find?
As students discuss these questions, theteacher acknowledges student thinking byparaphrasing and thanking them for theircomments. The teacher may also point torelevant portions of the artwork as students
talk to help to strengthen the connection
between statements and the “visual text.”

Science Connections

ELA Connections

One of the Crosscutting Concepts in the Next Generation
Science Standards is Stability and Change. Think of what
the landscape in the painting looks like today.

One of the anchor standards in the Common Core asks students
to analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or
topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches
the author takes.

How has the landscape in the paintingchanged over time?
What caused those changes to occur?
What still looks the same today as it doesin the painting?
Why have those things not changed?

Bring your students to the Honolulu Museum of Art
to see real landscape paintings like this in its guided
school tour The Great Outdoors. Students can see howartists documented our changing world, then create
their own landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes.

Tour information and registration online:
honolulumuseum.org/
pages/13820-great_outdoors

How does hearing or reading about the painting
add to your understanding?
What more do you know now?

Social Studies Connections

Fine Arts Connections

The C3 Framework for Social Studies asks students to explore
how social and economic forces impact the geography ofplaces where we live over time.

The arts provide a way for students to envision things theycannot directly observe, including past and future events.
Following discussion of the painting, try these prompts withyour students to encourage visualization.

How have human activities affected how
Honolulu has changed?
How have political and economic decisions
influenced the cultural and environmental
characteristics of this scene over time?
Who should decide how public spaces change?

Teacher Resources
For related resources and projects, visit honolulumuseum.org/learn
See Art Make Art Tour:The Great OutdoorsRead the descriptions of the artist and of theartwork on the right side of this page.

Lending Collection
You can check out thousands of authentic
objects from the museum’s Lending Collection
free of charge for classroom use.
For example, you can borrow a cannonball tohelp bring to life the Punchbowl Fort depicted inthis poster. Cannonballs from the fort weighed
32 pounds and may have been able to reach
Honolulu Harbor more than a mile away.

Call the Lending Collection at:
808.532.8736

Paint a picture of what this landscape may havelooked like before humans arrived on O‘ahu.
Paint a picture of what this view may look like
100 years from now.

The Artist:

Anders Elias Jorgensen
Danish artist Elias Jorgensen visited
Hawai‘i while on vacation in 1875,
from his home in Oakland, California.
He was captivated by the charm of theislands and decided to stay awhile,
sending for his easel and sketchbooks
so that he could sketch the scenery inand around Honolulu.

The Artwork:
This view looks beyond the crumbling remains of old Punchbowl Fort,
to Waikīkī and Diamond Head. Thenas now, the rim of Punchbowl Crater
was famous for superb panoramic
views. The ribbon-like road below
leads past pastures, ponds, andmarshy areas to the palm-fringedshores of Waikīkī. Occasional signs ofhabitation are visible along the way,
but the area would not be developed
until artesian wells were drilled a few
years later. The fort was put up earlyin the century to defend Honolulu.
Its cannons were never called upon
to fire a shot, other than to salute
incoming vessels or to record royalbirths, deaths, and marriages.

Learn more at
HawaiiPublicSchools.org