09/13/2023
ART INSTITUTE TEACHER OPEN HOUSE
Thursday, September 21, 2023. 4:30-7:30
Join us for free food and drink (beer and wine from 5-6pm), high quality posters, image sets, curriculum guides, art making, museum admission and tours and more! ALL FREE
Space is limited and advanced registration is required at this link: https://www.artic.edu/events/5783/fall-teacher-open-house
12/06/2022
Chicago Teachers and Parents: Check out this great learning resource made available to area kids by our colleagues at Chicago Public Library.
12/05/2022
Ask an Educator
Looking for artworks to enliven classroom learning or to visit on your self-guided museum tour? Connect virtually with the museum’s experienced volunteer educators and get recommendations for works of art as well as digital resources that perfectly complement your unique curriculum. Simply fill out this form to get started: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXvNj6ai20cdkFf4BwWgFMPsyoWN9K41D3-kzyZPWoPD8w_w/viewform
View Tour Offerings: https://www.artic.edu/learn-with-us/educators/visit-with-my-students
Image: Abelardo Morell. New Years Eve, 1989/90. Gift of Abelardo Morell. © Abelardo Morell, courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
11/13/2022
Back on view! Alma Thomas's "Starry Night and the Astronauts." Learn more about the work and access a teaching resource here: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/129884/starry-night-and-the-astronauts
"Starry Night and the Astronauts" is back on view at the Art Institute! ✨🚀
Alma Thomas, Howard University's first fine arts graduate, spent 35 years as a junior-high arts educator in Washington, D.C.
After decades as a representational painter, she began in her 70s to explore abstraction, creating shimmering, mosaic-like fields of color with rhythmic dabs of paint, often inspired by forms or scenes from nature.
This painting evokes the celestial patterns and open expanse of a night sky, but despite its narrative title, the painting could also be read as an aerial view of a watery surface, playing with our sense of immersion within an otherwise flat picture plane.
See "Starry Night and the Astronauts" (1972) by Alma Thomas on view in Gallery 291 of the Modern Wing.
10/28/2022
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Chicago native Ivan Albright (1897-1983) was known as a “master of the macabre” famous for his richly detailed paintings of ghoulish subjects. Albright was commissioned to create this painting for the 1945 movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The portrait appeared in vivid Technicolor, within the otherwise black-and-white film, causing a sensation. When Albright’s canvas was exhibited at the Art Institute later that year, the Chicago Tribune reported that the museum “is having a heck of a time handling the crowds flocking to see his painting.”
Learn more about the artist and his work: https://www.artic.edu/artists/33376/ivan-albright
10/26/2022
STUDENT EXPERIENCES: BOOK NOW!
Registration is now open for self-guided student tours as well as educator-led museum visits and virtual student experiences! Offerings include the themes of Art across Cultures, Art + Activism and Art + Access. Find all of our offerings and schedule your student experience at Visit with My Students: https://nocache.staging.artic.edu/learn-with-us/educators/visit-with-my-students
10/09/2022
Art + Activism
Kelly Church is an Ottawa/Pottawatomi/Ojibwe artist, activist and culture keeper. Native artists such as Church have relied on black ash trees to make baskets since time immemorial. Across the United States, however, these trees are being destroyed by the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect. As a fifth-generation basket weaver, Church teaches native youth nature conservation, harvesting, and weaving skills as she learned from her forebears. Inside this work, “Sustaining Traditions—Digital Teachings,” Church has placed a flash drive containing files that record her knowledge for her community.
Classroom Conversation Prompt: What do you care about? What are the current issues that impact you or your community? How might you use your voice and actions to impact change?
Learn more about this work: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/254374/sustaining-traditions-digital-teachings
09/15/2022
Art + History
On this day in Birmingham Alabama,1963
In "The Birmingham Project," Dawoud Bey memorialized the tragic events that took place on September 15, 1963, when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young black girls. Later that day two black teenage boys also died in related incidents of racist violence. In each diptych Bey paired a youth of the same age as one of the murdered children with an adult who has reached the age that the six boys and girls would be today. Read More about the work: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/221070/braxton-mckinney-and-lavon-thomas
Dawoud Bey
Braxton McKinney and Lavon Thomas,"" 2012
© 2012 Dawoud Bey
Photography Associates Fund