Art Museums
Explore the sites of popular art galleries to view collections of famous artwork. There are many interactive activities for kids to help them gain an appreciation and understanding for art. Included are lesson plan ideas for learning about art and three related eThemes resources about art and artists.
Grades
- 3,
- 4,
- 5,
- 6,
- 7,
- 8,
- 9,
- 10,
- 11,
- 12
Links
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The Museum of Modern Art, New York
This site provides an overview of the different works in the Museum of Modern Art's collection. You can choose to see just the "Highlights" or explore the section's homepage.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art: Timeline of Art History
This interactive timeline provides an overview of the history of art as represented in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection.
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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
This site has several different interactive presentations on different artists and art topics.
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National Gallery of Art
Roll your mouse over the pictures at the top of the page to see what the topic is. Click on the one you want. These are all fun activities geared toward kids. The sculpture garden one includes a story with audio.
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National Museum of Women in the Arts
Browse the collections by century. You can see works by famous women artists and read their biographies.
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Cleveland Museum of Art
Each day the museum offers a selection of searches, drawn at random from their extensive collection database to explore. Most images have additional descriptive text, and can be enlarged or explored in detail. You can also send an e-postcard of the artwork.
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Philadelphis Museum of Art
Take a virtual tour of the museum. You can explore each floor by clicking directly on the map, or by using the collection links listed below.
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The Renaissance Connection
This interactive site from the Allentown Art Musuem lets students explore this important period in art history. Learn about the life of a Renaissance artist, become a patron of the arts, or investigate Renaissance artwork in-depth. The fully interactive version requires the Flash plug-in.
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Van Gogh Museum
This is the official site for the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands. Click on "Van Gogh's Life" to learn about this famous Dutch artist.
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Louvre Museum
Explore the various room of this famous French museum on a virtual tour, or explore selected works of art or art periods in greater depth. This site has numerous interactive tours and tutorials that highlight different aspects of the museum's collection. Requires QuickTime VR.
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National Gallery UK
On this site, you can see the entire National Gallery permanent collection and long-term loans. The collection online is broken up into themes that can be explored seperately, and there are several interactive special features including audio tours.
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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Browse selected works from any of the museum's collections or exhibitions. Images can be enlarged and explored in greater detail, and each image contains additional descriptive information.
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Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Explore the collections online by clicking on the "Art" link. You can browse the collections by artist, subject, type of artwork, or artistic period. There are many images and lots of textual information about each collection.
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Hermitage Virtual Academy
Here are five interactive art history tutorials illustrated with works of art from the Hermitage collection. Here you can learn about ancient Rome, Biblical subjects, Imperial Russia, and more. The Virtual Academy is best viewed using Internet Explorer.
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Art Attack
Apply what you've learned about art by making some of your own. This site has over one hundred art activities for kids.
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PBS: Art in the 21st Century
This lesson plan for grades 9-12 explores the cliche of the lone artist and the role of collaboration in the creation of art. Included are activities for students, slideshows, and video clips from the PBS program Art 21.
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BBC: How Art Made the World
This companion site to the BBC program contains lots of related resources on art, Leonardo, and museums that cover the art history discussed in the series. NOTE: The reading level is too advanced for younger students, but there is lots of useful background information for teachers.
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SmARTkids
Students can learn to look at art with this interactive site. See featured artwork, learn the language of art, visit and artist's studio, and explore art history with the SmARTkids guides.
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eThemes Resource: Famous People: Artists
View the works of famous artists, including Salvador Dali, Grandma Moses, Georgia O'Keefe, Mary Cassatt, MC Escher, Andy Warhol, Augustus Rodin, Picasso, Grant Wood, and more. Includes biographies and classroom activities about art. There are links to an eMINTS WebQuest and eThemes Resources on Vincent Van Gogh, George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Hart Benton, and color theory.
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eThemes Resource: French Art and Artists
Discover French art and artists. Find out about the art periods such as Romanesque, Gothic, Fauves, Cubism, and Impressionism. Learn their distinct characteristics, influence, and reflection of culture. Read biographies of Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Claude Monet, and many other famous French artists. View paintings, architecture, sculpture, and stained glass works created by French artists throughout the centuries. Includes image galleries, games, and quizzes. There are links to eThemes resources on art museums, artists, Renaissance, and the country of France.
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eThemes Resource: American Artists
These resources are about the history of American art and artists. Learn about ways that artists have interpreted events in U.S. history from colonial times to the present. See how artists have depicted such topics as the American Revolution, Westward expansion, industrialization, Native Americans, and more. There are virtual museum tours, lesson plan activities, artists' biographies, and many images. Included are two related eThemes resources about artists.
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eThemes Resource: Missouri: Artists Thomas Hart Benton and George Caleb Bingham
These sites feature the artwork of two famous Missouri painters. Many of the works are online and are accompanied with explanations about how the paintings relate to Missouri history. Includes biographies and photos of their former Missouri homes, plus photos of Benton's mural in the State Capitol. There is also information about the American Regionalism painting genre.
Education Standards
