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Enthusiastic and knowledgeable museum docents encourage students’ thoughtful observations during lively gallery discussions tailored to grade and skill level. Throughout the inquiry process, docents provide cultural and historical context for artworks to inspire students to make connections across academic disciplines by thinking critically and using deductive reasoning skills.
You may choose to add a 30-minute independent viewing activity at the end of any tour. With this option, each student selects an artwork in the galleries as the focus of independent observation and analysis. The exercise, outlined in a series of prompts on a gallery handout, guides students in applying analytical and interpretive strategies learned during their tour. Docents remain in the galleries for assistance as needed. Students produce aesthetic and critical responses to their chosen artwork as defined by the Pennsylvania Academic Standards for the Arts and Humanities. This activity is an excellent basis for follow-up research, writing, or art-making projects back at school.
60-minute tour: $7.00/student
90-minute tour: $8.50/student
Extend any tour with the 30-minute independent viewing activity for an additional $1.50/student.
Read article on CMA's
gallery tours published in Carnegie Magazine.
Topics can be adapted for students in grades 3–12 and university students except where noted.
Looking and Learning
Ideal for first-time or novice art museum visitors, this tour engages students in observation and discussion of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts objects from many time periods and parts of the world. Students hone their viewing skills and learn to articulate their ideas about what they see by discussing subject matter and the basic elements and principles of design.
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Looking and Learning in Context
In addition to learning visual analysis skills, more experienced students discuss the impact of cultural and historical conditions on artworks. Higher-level thinking skills come into play as students make connections between what they observe and background information provided by museum docents, and arrive at meaningful interpretations.
Looking and Learning & Looking and Learning in Context can complement classroom Traveling Art Gallery programs. View our collection database online at www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/
Exploring Ancient Greece and Rome
Students journey through time to the origins of democracy and the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome in the museum’s renowned Halls of Architecture and Sculpture. They learn about the principles of visual balance and harmony demonstrated in plaster casts of buildings like the Parthenon and sculpture like the Discus Thrower. Classically inspired artwork from later centuries helps students to grasp the ancient world’s ongoing influence. A comparison with Egyptian culture is available by request.
Athena to Zeus: Mythology in Ancient Greek and Roman Art
Students explore representations of the human figure from ancient Greek and Roman mythology in paintings, sculpture, and architecture. They discover the importance of myths in the ancient world as ways to explain life experiences and the cycles of nature. A comparison with Asian and African art is available by request.
Art and Christianity
Art created in or for religious contexts is explored in this tour of Christian-themed painting and sculpture produced between the 14th and 20th centuries. Students discover symbols and stories in art, and docents guide them in interpreting their meaning and significance.
Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania
Local heritage and state history come alive in the work of Pennsylvania artists such as Edward Hicks, David Gilmore Blythe, Mary Cassatt, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and John Kane. Students recognize familiar Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania scenes depicted by 19th- and 20th-century artists and reflect on the ways in which industrialization shaped the landscape and influenced daily life.
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Impressionism: An Artistic
Revolution
Students examine works by major Impressionist painters—Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cassatt, and more—and discover how and why their innovative subjects and techniques captured their personal experiences of the world. The tour discusses the relationship of Impressionist art to the period’s social, scientific, and industrial revolutions. A look at Post-Impressionist paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and others reveals some emerging characteristics of Modernism. This tour is ideal for French-language classes.
Historic World Architecture: The Grand Tour
Students visit great architectural monuments from six major cultures represented by full-scale casts in the museum’s awe-inspiring Hall of Architecture: ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, French Romanesque, French Gothic, and Italian Renaissance. The tour introduces students to structural and cultural aspects of these works and provides time for them to make quick sketches, write notes and journal entries, and take pictures at stops on their “voyage,” gathering ideas and images for projects back at school. Students also learn about the process of making architectural casts and the assembly of the Hall of Architecture in 1907, which brought the world’s great monuments to Pittsburgh.
Art of the 20th and 21st Centuries
Students participate in active looking and interpretive analysis of artworks created in the 20th and 21st centuries, a period that has witnessed an explosion of new media. The museum’s important collection of recent art puts students in touch with everything from modernist paintings on canvas to video and sculptural installations. Students become more skilled in aesthetic and critical response as they consider the intersection of art and contemporary experience.
Teachers may select a broad overview or one of the following themes, which correspond to points in recent history:
American Abstraction examines how early 20th-century artists borrowed European techniques to develop a distinctly American response to Modernism.
Art after Modernism explains the array of new artistic genres that emerged in the latter half of the 20th century, including Pop art, Minimal sculpture, and video. Available after Apr. 6, 2009.
Contemporary Art sheds light on the diverse practices and far-reaching cultural themes expressed in the art of this century. Available as Confronting the Unknown in the galleries of Life on Mars through Jan. 9, 2009, and in the permanent collection after Apr. 6, 2009. This topic is not available between Jan. 13 and Apr. 6, 2009.
Life on Mars: Confronting the Unknown
Artists help us see, think about, and respond to the world and the challenges it throws our way. Students analyze the techniques, materials, and ideas of works in Life on Mars, learning to formulate thoughtful responses and practicing skills for expressing, in verbal and written form, the meanings they find in the art of our own time.
The Carnegie International and the Old Masters of Tomorrow
Carnegie Museum of Art has purchased works of art shown in Carnegie International exhibitions since they began in 1896. This tour traces the history of those purchases, from works by Winslow Homer and James McNeill Whistler presented in the first exhibition, to new acquisitions from Life on Mars, the current show. Students discover the role of the International in shaping evolving attitudes about contemporary art over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, and make discoveries about art as a tool for understanding the world.
Art and Writing Topics
Works of art inspire creative stories and personal interpretations that become rich subjects for student writers. Two 90-minute tours and the intensive Writing the Expository Essay program are available, and are tailored to your classroom curriculum.
Art Inspires Narrative Writing
Grade 6 and up (90-min. tour)
Art inspires great stories, and the museum’s collection of narrative paintings inspires great creative writing! In the galleries, students analyze works of art, identifying and discussing depictions of character, setting, theme, and plot. Writing prompts delivered by docents allow students to practice developing their own narratives. They leave the galleries more alert to the communicative strategies of visual artists and equipped with descriptive language and a framework for original writing back in the classroom. This tour can be conducted in Life on Mars through Jan. 9, 2009.
Art and Literature
Grade 9 and up (90-min. tour)
Students analyze works of visual art, considering subject, form, context, and content—strategies also common to analysis of literature. By selecting painting and sculpture in the galleries related to literature introduced in an American or world literature class, students discover parallels between the two art forms and deepen their understanding of moments in cultural history. They also practice initial steps in producing effective literary criticism and interpretation. This tour can be conducted in Life on Mars through Jan. 9, 2009.
Writing the Expository Essay:
A High School Interdisciplinary Program
Grade 10 and up
10:15 a.m.–1:15 p.m.; includes time for eating brown bag lunches
$10.00/student
Teachers interested in this program will be put in touch with the office of school and teacher programs to plan a three-hour experience tailored to school curriculum. The program begins with an observation- and discussion-based gallery tour; then students learn a series of five steps for analyzing and responding to selected works of art. Gallery discussion, writing prompts, and occasional quick sketches help students gather information and insights about what they see. Their “research” becomes the basis of a thesis statement for an essay in which they express their critical and aesthetic response. Students share portions of their drafts in the galleries. The experience offers excellent connections to the art, art history, and English curricula and preparation for Pennsylvania’s mandated writing assessment tests in persuasive and informational writing. This program can be conducted in Life on Mars through Jan. 9, 2009.
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