NPG IN YOUR CLASSROOM Volume 3, no. 3. Fall 2009 Every Portrait Tells a Story Using Portraits to Teach Language Arts Welcome to the fall 2009 issue of NPG in Your Classroom! In this issue, we explore how to incorporate portraiture into language arts classes. The portraits in our collection are useful for teaching social studies and art. They serve as terrific inspirations for creative writing, as well as effective ways to teach students to analyze texts and to identify conflict and other elements of narrative structure. You can even integrate art, social studies, and language arts by having students use portraits as visual prompts for writing historical fiction set in the eras that you study. Whether you visit our museum or explore the resources available on our Web site, this issue will give you great ideas for how to use our portraits in your classroom. Gallery asked artists throughout the United States to submit likenesses of people close to them. From more than 3,300 entries from every state, a jury of experts chose forty-nine works of art in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, video and new media, and photography. They are as diverse as America and represent many stylistic approaches. Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845 1924 Through January 22, 2010 Study the American West from 1845 to 1924 through the lens of portraiture. Grades 4 12 Special School Programs 2009 2010 Portraiture Today Examine the art of contemporary portraiture in the exhibitions Portraiture Now: Communities and the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009. Grades 4 12 About the Exhibitions: In Portraiture Now: Communities, which runs through July 5, 2010, three painters explore the idea of community through a series of related portraits of friends, townspeople, or families. The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009, which runs through August 22, 2010, is the result of an open competition in which the National Portrait About the Exhibition: The American West was dramatically remade during the eighty years between the Mexican War and the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. Faces of the Frontier, which runs through January 24, 2010, tells the story of these changes through one hundred photographic portraits of the defining men and women of this period. Left: Lorna by Jim Torok, oil on panel, 2000. Courtesy of the artist and Lora Reynolds Gallery Jim Torok Above: Clarence King and the Field Party of 1864 by Silas Selleck, albumen silver print, 1864. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Using Portraits to Study Character, Setting, and Conflict By Amanda C. Shopa, sixth-grade teacher, and Kate O Donnell, resource teacher, Graham Road Elementary School In December 2008 sixth-grade students from Graham Road Elementary School visited the National Portrait Gallery so they could learn to read portraits and be able to identify the elements of narrative structure including setting, character, plot, conflict, and theme (VA SOL 6.4a). society, or subject versus nature. Students worked in small groups to act out each form of conflict as a tableau. Students were then given selected portraits from the Portraiture Now: Feature Photography exhibition. They were instructed to examine the portrait and describe what they saw. Using that data, they were instructed to consider the conflict, the setting, and the identity of the characters. Because the purpose of the students visit to the Portrait Gallery had an English language-arts focus, students were asked to think of a creative story about a portrait, rather than interpret the right information. For example, the students examined Steve Pyke s photographic portrait of Rem Koolhaas, which shows the world-renowned architect and opponent of skyscrapers peering out of a window. Students guessed that he could be looking outside at a rainy day, wishing he was not at work, watching a car accident, or thinking about things he had to do. Students decided he might be a father, an office worker, or an artist. They speculated that he might be at work, in church, or in a café or art gallery. While none of these answers were right, all of them made sense based on what they could see in the portrait. At the museum, students were led on a tour by Amanda Shopa Over several class periods before their visit to the museum, students learned to identify settings, characters, and plot in a text or a story narrated by a friend. Beyond simply identifying the conflicts, students needed to identify if the conflict was subject versus subject, subject versus self, subject versus In the Kogod Courtyard, students form tableaus of conflict in small groups. Amanda Shopa
a Portrait Gallery educator. Students answered questions about whom they could indentify in each portrait, the type of settings in the portraits, and how the portrait s creator manipulated artistic elements to make the portrait interesting. After the tour, in the Kogod Courtyard, students were led in a grade-wide tableau exercise. In groups of three, students created frozen scenes of various conflicts, including the conflicts from a few portraits they had seen. Finally, students were brought back into the gallery, where they stood in front of their favorite portrait. Under the watchful eye of the security guard, students made tableaux of the conflict in each portrait. Following the field trip, students reflected on how examining portraits helped them understand character, setting, conflict, and plot. One student wrote that he could better understand story elements by visualizing the picture and reading the paper next to the portrait. Another student wrote when I look at a pic[ture] in a book I can tell what it is about, where it is, and the people in it without reading the page first. That is why looking at those portraits helps me. As teachers who are new to arts integration, these comments really excited us because we were able to see that our students were gaining greater understanding through this process. Our teaching has definitely been affected in a positive way by using portraits from the Portrait Gallery. To learn more about the Living Pictures tableau exercises used by the students from Graham Road Elementary School, visit http://www.kennedycenter.org/education/pdot/livingpictures/video_ workshop.html Amanda Shopa Students participate in a concentration circle in the Kogod Courtyard.
Using Portraits as Visual Prompts for Creative Writing Portraits make terrific visual prompts for classroom creative writing activities. The portraits exhibited in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009 are particularly well suited for use as visual prompts. You can view images from the exhibition at http://www.portraitcompetition. si.edu/exhibition2009/allfinalists.aspx. When choosing portraits for use as visual prompts in discussion or writing activities, consider what concepts and/or content you want to emphasize. Some images may be more character-driven a perfect opportunity for students to practice creating well-rounded characters. Others will encourage attention to setting. No matter which portrait you choose, encourage students to bring their own interpretations to the image. 1. Before displaying your chosen portrait, engage students in a discussion of what makes a good story. As they come up with some of the concepts listed below, you can emphasize any or all of those you are currently studying. Possible concepts they will consider include: Setting Plot Back story Characters Theme Point of view Literary devices 2. Introduce the concept of a story graphic to the students. A story graphic functions as a visual map that helps your students see their story in its entirety before they begin writing. It is drawn picture by picture, with limited text. Through it, the writer can convey key elements of plot, story flow, major characters, and emotional tone. Because there is a strong visual element to a story graphic, this technique works well when you are using a portrait or other visual prompt to help students generate their story. Share an example with your students so that they understand what they are expected to produce. 3. Assign students a portrait or have students choose a portrait from which to create their story graphic. (The portrait can be the same for all students or different for each student.) Ask questions to help students begin thinking about their story. Have them consider the following elements of the portrait: Facial expression Clothing Pose Direction of gaze Setting Objects Colors Relationships between sitters Encourage students to use these elements to create a character, to imagine a setting (both in terms of physical location and in terms of time period), and to begin to shape a plot. 4. Give students time to draft their story graphic. After they have worked for the desired amount of time, have them share their story graphics in small groups and get feedback on from their peers. 5. Finally, have students use their story graphics to draft their complete story. Stories may be revised following peer or teacher review and then shared with the class. Are the students surprised at how many different kinds of stories were inspired by the same image? Were certain ideas and themes common to several students? Image: Nicholas by Laura Chasman, gouache on museum mounting board, 2008. Collection of the artist Laura Chasman Please contact the school and teacher program coordinator at whitebz@si.edu to register for a school or teacher program, request additional information, or contribute to this newsletter.
Red Cloud (1822 1909) Red Cloud by Charles M. Bell Albumen silver print, 1880 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Red Cloud (1822 1909) I have tried to get from my Great Father what is right and just, exclaimed Red Cloud to government officials at the conclusion of his first trip to the East in 1870. Two years earlier, the celebrated Lakota Sioux leader had forced U.S. authorities to abandon a series of newly constructed forts meant to protect settlers moving across traditional Native lands. His successful assaults on the forts compelled the U.S. government to sign the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteeing the Lakota control of the Black Hills and much of South Dakota and Montana. Despite the promises of the treaty, white settlement continued in Lakota lands in the 1870s, and violence broke out again between the Sioux and the U.S. Army. This time, however, Red Cloud chose diplomacy, not warfare, to protect the Lakota s land base and to ensure the tribe s political and cultural independence. As the Lakota were forced onto reservations, Red Cloud emerged as a spokesman for his people protesting government corruption in reservation administration; asserting the authority of the chiefs; opposing the Dawes Act of 1887, which undermined the traditional Lakota way of life; and cultivating contacts with eastern reformers. He negotiated with officials and eloquently criticized government Indian policy during his well-publicized trips to Washington, D.C., where he met with five different U.S. presidents over a period of thirty years. Whose voice was first sounded on this land? he asked his audience on one such trip. The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows.... When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him. Washington photographer Charles M. Bell seated Red Cloud next to a papier-mâché rock and a painted seascape backdrop for this portrait taken in 1880, during one of his many trips to the nation s capital. Red Cloud apparently arrived at Bell s studio wearing a traditional white man s suit; the decorative Indian shirt that he wears for the photograph was lent to him by someone perhaps the photographer or someone in his delegation party. He holds a silver-tipped cane that he was given by a friend at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was very proud of this cane, and it appears in various photographic portraits of him. Creative Writing Activity Writing Historical Fiction from Multiple Perspectives Using the portrait as a visual prompt, write a story about Red Cloud s visit to Washington, D.C., from the perspective of Red Cloud himself. Then write a story using the same events and details, but tell it from the point of view of a U.S. government official or the photographer Charles M. Bell. Finally, use the same details and events to write a newspaper article describing Red Cloud s visit. Learning to Look 1. Describe the expression of Red Cloud s face. What might he have been thinking or feeling when this photograph was taken? 2. The photographer, Charles M. Bell, seated Red Cloud in front of a painted background and a fake rock. What effect do you think Bell was trying to create with this setting? How would your impression of Red Cloud be different if he was sitting in a real outdoor setting? How would you view him differently if he were posed in an indoor setting? How would it change what you think of him if he were standing instead of sitting? 3. Red Cloud apparently arrived at Bell s studio wearing a traditional white man s suit; the decorative Indian shirt that he wears for the photograph was lent to him by someone. Why do you think that he was portrayed wearing this shirt? How would your impression of him be different if he were wearing a suit in this photograph?