Vol. 2 Welcome to the Smithsonian American Art Museum Winter 2007

Classroom Connections

SAAM docent Marilyn Reis takes eighth-grade U.S. 

history students through the galleries. 

After a major renovation, the 

Smithsonian American Art 

Museum (SAAM) reopened its 

doors in July 2006. It was not until 

September, though, that a certain 

group of visitors returned for the 

first time in six years. School 

busses began pulling up in front of 

the group entrance that month. 

Since then we have welcomed 

more than 1,700 students from 

more than forty schools. Each has 

enjoyed a rare opportunity to view 

art as part of the American 

experience. 

 Many think of a trip to an art 

museum as a wonderful chance for 

students to see firsthand our 

nation’s treasures and to develop an 

appreciation for art and cultural 

institutions. While those benefits 

certainly exist, our Eye Opener 

tours give students and teachers 

much more. Educators can choose 

tours addressing a variety of topics. 

Most are designed to integrate 

easily into the school curriculum. 

SAAM can help bring your lessons 

to life with paintings and 

sculptures, using techniques that 

analyze artworks as primary 

resources. SAAM docents are well 

trained to offer curricular ties to 

American history, language arts, 

visual art, and other classes. 

 For a list of our Eye Opener tour 

themes visit the online listing: 

http://americanart.si.edu/education/

programs/field_trips.cfm#themes. 

MORE THAN A FIELD TRIP

Smithsonian American Art Museum www.americanart.si.edu/education

In This Issue... 

Our Space: More Than a Field Trip 

Educators in the Galleries 

Creating American Stories 

Your Space: Teacher Feature, Janet Johnson

Cyberspace: CILC Partnership 

 Docent Feature, Phoebe Klein 

 New Tour Registration Online 

 Video Visit Profile: 

Beating the Odds 

If the existing themes do not meet 

your specific classroom needs, ask us 

to help craft a custom tour. 

Registering for these tours is now 

easier than ever (see article on page 5, 

“New! Easy Tour Booking Online”). 

As always, these themes are also 

offered via videoconference as a part 

of our Artful Connections tours. 

Since its reopening in July, the 

Smithsonian American Art Museum has 

become a hot spot for people from all 

walks of life. Among those eager 

visitors have been educators. SAAM 

Education staff has had the pleasure of 

welcoming a number of different teacher 

groups for unique experiences with the 

collection. 

 Dr. Fred Buettler, assistant historian 

at the U.S. House of Representatives, 

brought a group of eleven secondary 

teachers to SAAM as part of the pilot 

House Fellows program. The House 

Fellows program brings to Washington, D.C., social studies teachers from 

across the country to identify 

resources with an emphasis on the 

role of the United States Congress in 

American history. Teachers 

representing states from Alaska to 

Pennsylvania spent time in the 

galleries examining SAAM artworks 

that could be used to highlight 

Congress and show how its 

members have shaped the nation. 

 More teachers came to 

SAAM’s galleries though 

Teaching American History 

(TAH) grants. TAH offers a wide 

array of experiences for U.S. 

history teachers who want to learn 

more about diverse ways to 

implement the American history 

curriculum. (see ‘Visitors,’ 

continued on page 2). 

EDUCATORS IN THE 

GALLERIES
Capture of H.B.M. Frigate Macedonian by U.S. 

Frigate United States, October 25, 1812, 1852, 

Thomas Chambers , Smithsonian American Art 

Museum 1992 18

Our art, your classroom Winter 2007 

OUR SPACE

CREATING AMERICAN STORIES

Education representatives Debora 

Hanson and Preston Shockley 

toured our galleries and discussed 

with SAAM Education staff the use 

of the museum’s visual arts 

resources in their state’s 

curriculum. The discussion and 

presentations described integrating 

social studies and the visual arts. 

 If you know of a group or 

organization that might like to visit 

the galleries in person for 

professional development or for a 

special program, contact Suzannah 

Niepold at niepolds@si.edu. 

Smithsonian American Art Museum www.americanart.si.edu/education 

(‘Visitors’ continued from page 1) 

The TAH program in Fairfax County 

Public Schools in Fairfax, Virginia, 

brought its participants to the galleries 

this past fall as well. SAAM 

Education staff worked with 

secondary education professor Dr. 

Kathleen A. Steeves of the George 

Washington University to present a 

workshop titled The Industrial United 

States. Teachers used the SAAM 

collection to develop lesson ideas for 

industrialization. 

 Delaware Department of 

This October, SAAM hosted eighthgrade students from Stuart-Hobson 

Middle School and Alice Deal Junior 

High School, both Washington, D.C. 

public schools, as part of its school 

partnership program, “Creating 

American Stories.” 

 This program, now in its third 

year, is a semester-long interdisciplinary approach that involves 

multiple visits to the museum by both 

teachers and students. Repeated visits 

deepen the contact between museum 

and school and result in greater 

impact on the students. Rather than 

sharing the brief interaction of a 

single tour, students, teachers, and 

museum staff have the opportunity to 

get to know one another and bring the 

worlds of classroom and gallery 

closer together. 

 The visits begin in the summer, 

when teams of teachers—representing 

social studies, visual arts, language 

arts, and special education—visit 

SAAM to select eight works of art 

that relate to their curriculum. 

Teachers and students then receive 

reproductions of the featured artworks 

for use in the classroom. This year, 

SAAM Education staff also had a 

chance to visit classes at Alice Deal 

Junior High to teach students how to 

“read” a work of art as an additional 

element of the program. 

All the student participants visit 

SAAM in October. This is the 

students’ first chance to see the 

original artworks and discuss them 

with a SAAM curator and docent. 

Back in the classroom, each student 

selects one of the featured artworks 

and writes an original composition 

based on what they have learned. 

These compositions—poems, short 

narratives, journals, letters, and other 

forms—are compiled into a book that 

also includes student artwork. The 

book is distributed to the students at a 

final reception for students and their 

families. At this event, selected students 

read their work, and friends sign each 

others’ books. 

 A key advantage to this partnership is 

the opportunity to draw on the strengths 

of both classroom and museum 

education. SAAM Education staff uses 

artworks as primary sources to teach 

American history and culture. Learning 

with objects draws on different skills, 

learning styles, and intelligences than 

those involved in many classroom 

lessons. As Amy Trenkle, lead teacher at 

Stuart-Hobson Middle School, put it, 

“[the program] supports all learners.” 

Museum education benefits students in 

other ways as well. After her students 

visited SAAM this year, Cynthia 

Mostoller, lead teacher at Alice Deal, 

remarked, “It is gratifying to see how so 

many of our least successful students 

thrive in a different setting.” 

 SAAM is pleased to partner with the 

wonderful teachers from these D.C. 

public schools and is looking forward to 

bringing “Creating American Stories” to 

next year’s eighth graders! 

Matt Roha, Alice Deal Jr. High 

 The William Randolph Hearst 

Endowment for America’s Artistic 

Heritage has generously supported this 

educational initiative. 
Our Art, Your Classroom

YOUR SPACE

Our art, your classroom Winter 2007 

TEACHER FEATURE

Dedicated to the Students who may 

learn more through Art than Lecture! 

Have you ever tried to explain the Tariff 

of Abominations to a class of twentyseven high school juniors who will freely 

tell you (by way of an anonymous poll) 

that they like school most of the time but 

don’t learn through lectures and do really 

like movies in class? Let’s see, a movie 

on tariffs..... What about the Treaty of 

Ghent and its implications for our young 

nation (including Andrew Jackson 

fighting a battle after the fact)? A bunch 

of old men signing a treaty 200 years ago 

is dry enough; at least we try to throw in 

the Battle of New Orleans (complete 

with the song that, yes, I remember). 

Then there’s “nationalism,” a term the 

kids dutifully define from the glossary 

for vocab points but frequently don’t 

understand. We are now leading up to the 

Civil War in our history classes. Students 

have read (hopefully), filled in the 

worksheets with pictures of abolitionists, 

now what? 

 I am a special education teacher 

working in team-taught settings as well 

as one self-contained class in U.S. 

History. We all need, from time to time, 

a new or different approach. I believe I 

have found through the Teaching 

American History Grant one more way to 

reach students. This time it was through a 

day at the Smithsonian American Art 

Museum (SAAM), complete with 

lectures, tours, and interactive work. 

 Taking a look again at tariffs and 

such: I created a short PowerPoint 

presentation on the early 1800s, among 

other slides showing Wharf and 

Shipping, N.Y., which is a painting from 

SAAM by H. S. Beckwith (painted in 

1869). I added the sound of a ship’s 

foghorn, briefly bulleted points on tariffs, 

and mentioned that this painting actually 

hangs in downtown Washington, D.C. I 

juxtaposed The Signing of the Treaty of

Ghent, Christmas Eve, 1814 by Sir 

Amèdée Forestier with a famous picture 

of Jackson on his horse to highlight, 

again via PowerPoint, the treaty and the 

battle. 

Janet Johnson shows a William H. Johnson artwork, Three Great 

Abolitionists, on a monitor to enhance her classroom history lesson. 

them as background for their project. 

Last, but by no means least, is the 

abolitionist movement leading up to 

the Civil War. I found Three Great 

Abolitionists: A. Lincoln, F. Douglass, 

and J. Brown by William H. Johnson 

(1945) that, I hope, will capture the 

attention of students used to seeing 

these three famous men depicted in 

very different ways. 

In order to depict nationalism, we 

have just recently assigned small groups 

in a teamed class various events, 

inventions, artists, and presidents of the 

early part of the nineteenth century. 

They may show results in a variety of 

ways. When one group was assigned the 

Hudson River School, they were unsure 

how to proceed. I showed them how to 

use the SAAM site and suggested they 

might want to use The Subsiding of the 

Waters of the Deluge by Thomas Cole 

(1829). I am eager to see how creative 

this group will be in their use of this and 

other artworks, hoping they will use 

 It is my hope that in this, my last 

year of teaching, I will contribute to 

students’ understanding and 

appreciation of their heritage through 

the arts. 

— Janet Johnson 

Special Education Teacher 

Robinson Middle School 

Fairfax, Virginia 

Smithsonian American Art Museum www.americanart.si.edu/education 
Web Launchee 

Docent Feature 

Our art, your classroom Winter 2007

CYBERSPACE

The Smithsonian American Art 

Museum has become a content 

provider for the Center for 

Interactive Learning and 

Collaboration (CILC). CILC is a 

not-for-profit organization 

providing services, programs, and 

resources related to videoconferencing and other collaborative 

technologies. 

 As a content provider, SAAM 

has listed several Artful 

Connections programs in the CILC 

database: 

• A House Divided: Civil War 

Images in the Classroom 

• Beating the Odds: African 

American Women Artists 

• Latino Art and Culture 

• Lure of the West 

• Native Americans 

• Young America 

• Reshaping American Life 

 When general information about 

SAAM’s Artful Connections program 

is available at

http://americanart.si.edu/education/pr

ograms/artful_connections.cfm, why 

use CILC? In addition to program 

descriptions, the CILC database 

includes information on program 

alignment with national standards, 

pre- and post-visit materials and 

activities, and program ratings posted 

by other users. To request and 

 

Docents are essential to every museum. 

They give tours of the galleries, and at 

SAAM they also lead videoconferences. 

From time to time, we will profile a docent 

who may be giving your next tour! 

I describe teaching as my avocation 

because I never taught as a career. When I 

was a teenager, I taught Sunday school, 

and as a college student, I taught dance at a 

local community center. When my son was 

born and I was no longer in the workplace, 

I began my experience with American art 

through a program that brought slide 

presentations geared to 4th grade 

curriculum to schools in Bridgeport, 

Connecticut. When my family relocated to 

the Washington, D.C., area, I began my 

thirty-three-year association with what we 

now call Smithsonian American Art 

Museum. 

 I’ve been working on aspects of 

distance learning since 1995, but SAAM’s 

present videoconference program goes 

back six years. When our building was 

closed for renovation, the program 

allowed us to stay in touch with the public 

around the country—and even beyond our 

borders. We have about twenty docents 

working with teleconferencing, and we 

love the chance to meet kids across vast 

distances in real time. Many of the tours 

we offer came from our gallery 

experiences, but several grew from 

specific requests from teachers. Some 

were so popular they became “standard” 

offerings. We are excited about the 

opportunity to customize our tours 

upon request. We often develop oneof-a-kind tours for teachers, and 

these tours usually lend themselves 

to reuse by other classrooms. 

— Phoebe Klein 

SAAM Docent 

Phoebe Klein

PARTNERSHIPS IN CYBERSPACE

schedule videoconferences using 

CILC’s website, you must 

register. Non-premium 

memberships are free. 

 CILC also offers online 

conferences and coordinates 

group projects for K–12 

educators. 

For further information, visit the 

CILC website at 

http://www.cilc.org/default.aspx

Smithsonian American Art Museum www.americanart.si.edu/education 
Our art, your classroom Winter 2007

NEW! EASY TOUR BOOKING ONLINE

It is now even easier for 

teachers to plan a visit—

whether in-person or virtual—to 

the Smithsonian American Art 

Museum. Booking is now 

available via an online form at 

http://americanart.si.edu/educati

on/programs/field_trip_form.cf

m. Register for our in-person 

Eye Opener tours as well as 

Artful Connections, our 

videoconferencing program 

using the link above. If you 

prefer a self-guided tour rather 

than a docent-led visit, you can 

still use this new form. After 

filling in the necessary 

information, our staff will 

contact you for formal 

scheduling and confirmation. 

 Educators with students in 

grades 4–12 should plan for a 

one-hour tour, while those 

bringing youngsters in grades 

K–3 should allow thirty minutes. 

 Are you looking for more 

than just a tour? Ask about our 

optional activities, and plan for 

an additional thirty minutes. 

Also, when booking via the Web 

site, please note our guidelines 

regarding chaperones and 

museum conduct. 

 The SAAM Education Staff 

hopes this new Web-based 

registration makes the museum 

and its resources more accessible 

to educators and students. 

 — Farley Goodrich 

 Education Intern

Beating the Odds is a tour that 

SAAM originally designed for 

Black History Month. It 

celebrates the talent and 

determination of a number of 

African American women artists 

including Edmonia Lewis, Alma 

Thomas, Lois Mailou Jones, 

Elizabeth Catlett, and Faith 

Ringgold. Each of them “beat the 

odds” to become successful or 

learned from women who paved 

the way for their accomplishments. 

 Participants in this Artful 

Connection videoconference will 

be asked to consider the question, 

“What can a group of female 

African American artists tell us 

about their experiences and their 

contributions to American art and 

society?” 

 Works created by these women 

demonstrate not only their extraordinary artistic skill, but also their life 

experiences, their cultural roots, and 

the social concerns that shaped their 

artistic choices. 

 The Smithsonian American Art 

Museum has thousands of paintings, 

prints, sculpture, and craft pieces 

created by women, and we display 

many of those artworks in our two 

buildings. Yet if you visited a museum 

a hundred years ago, there would have 

been very few works of art created by 

women and minorities. Just as women 

and minorities struggled in years past 

to open up career opportunities in 

medicine, law, business, and politics, 

they also strove to become artists. 

 In doing so, they have created art 

that makes us think about life and 

history in new ways. Such dedicated 

women and minorities have also 

Portrait of Alma Thomas, Laura Wheeler 

Waring, 1945, Smithsonian American Art 

Museum, Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1977.121

BEATING THE ODDS:

A VIDEO VISIT demonstrated that with talent, hard 

work, and determination, success can 

come to anyone in any field of 

interest. 

This newsletter is designed to inform teachers of our programs and showcase activities that integrate our materials in 

classrooms around the country. Please share this newsletter with teachers in your faculty lounge. To give feedback on this 

issue, ask questions about any of the programs highlighted, or pose questions about the Education Office itself, email us at 

SaamEdStaff@si.edu . 

Smithsonian American Art Museum www.americanart.si.edu/education