Teaching History with Works of Art

Last week, I attended a lecture and preview for the Columbus Museum of Art's (CMA) exhibit George Tooker: A Retrospective. This renewed my interest in how art can provide social commentary. Tooker's "protest pieces" express his views on urban isolation and racial and sexual discrimination. CMA's "Art and Social Issues in American Culture" features artwork with artist biographies and interdisciplinary lesson plans in categories of economics, war, and race & ethnicity.

The National Archives Digital Partnerships

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is taking strides to make more of its holdings available online. NARA has partnered with organization including Footnote.com, Google (National Archives on Google Video), and the University of Texas (Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century). For more resources, visit http://www.archives.gov/digitization/.

For example, digital images of the following records, and thousands more, are available for free at footnote.com:

• Records from the Constitutional Convention of 1787
• Copybooks of George Washington's correspondence with Secretaries of State, 1789-1796
• Records of Project Blue Book-UFO Investigations, 1947-1969