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
  

Ohio Memory has new look

Check out Ohio Memory's improved website at www.ohiomemory.org. Upgrades to the site have allowed for even more images to be made available from more than 330 institutions. I like the new search results feature, which displays results with the image, title, subject and description. Users can also save images to a “My Favorites” list that can be exported into PowerPoint or posted online to create a virtual exhibit.

Obama Gets Advice From Navajos Students

I can not help sharing this story from NPR.

Fourth, fifth and sixth grade students from Eagle's Nest Intermediate School, located on the Navajo Nation reservation in the desert of northern Arizona, wrote letters to President-elect Barack Obama describing their lives and asking questions. I was struck by the profoundness of many of the letters that described poverty and illness. Others made me chuckle (I wonder if Obama does listen to Hannah Montana's music). Excerpts of the letters can be found here. The audio of the students reading from their letters can not be missed.

TAH Project Directors Conference

Last week, I attended the Teaching American History (TAH) Project Directors Conference in New York, NY. This is an annual meeting intended to "promote an interactive learning and information exchange process between and among the Teaching American History (TAH) grantees and the U.S. Department of Education."

One of the highlights of the conference - besides a session on how to make and use foldables to teach social studies - was a keynote address The Gilded Age: Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution, Big Business, Labor Activism, Mass Immigration, and the ‘New Woman’ by historian Edward O'Donnell. His multimedia presentation focusing on analyzing images renewed my love of the Gilded Age, a period (post-Civil War - 1890s) so coined by Mark Twain because of the glitter on the surface masking the corruption on the inside.

In spite of the chilly weather, I was able to enjoy the city by the best mode of transportation - walking. I would have liked to make it out of Mid Town more, though. I did get to the Lower East Side to visit the Tenement Museum. I took the newest tour, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. Our small group started in front of the building at 97 Orchard Street to discuss the connotation of a tenement. Terms such as crowded, dirty, unsanitary, and the like are currently associated with tenement; however, in the mid to late 19th century tenement simply described a structure housing three or more unrelated families. We use the more cosmopolitan, French-derived word - apartment - to describe the same structure. The museum does a wonderful job of telling the individual stories of families who lived in the building and tackles larger issues such as discrimination, urban development, health legislation, and building codes.

I forgot my camera and have no photographs to share. Ask Mary to see her Central Park photos, though.

Picturing America

Last spring I applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The program is called "Picturing America." I received several large, beautiful pictures to post in my room or around the school. I have already used several of the pictures as writing prompts to stimulate discussion in my classroom about leadership, citizenship and courage. There is an accompanying Guide Book that offers background information on the artworks as well as some questioning ideas. It is tiered by grade level- elementary, middle and secondary. There was a second round of grant applications this fall, and I believe a new round will be offered in the spring. The good news is that the pictures and the guide book are all available online here.

You may want to check the list of schools that already have this resource on NEH website. There are a lot of schools in the area that applied and were recipients of this grant. You may have them already, but not know it. They are a great resource for all subject areas, and to use for cross-curricular activities.

Presidential Inaugurations

There is already much buzz about the inauguration ceremonies of Barack Obama in January 2009. Certainly, the crowds will be large and the media coverage persistent. How will this inauguration compare with those of past presidents? Check out "I Do Solemnly Swear . . .": Presidential Inaugurations from the Library of Congress' American Memory. This presentation includes diaries and letters of presidents and of those who witnessed inaugurations, handwritten drafts of inaugural addresses, broadsides, inaugural tickets and programs, prints, photographs, and sheet music relating to inaugurations from George Washington's in 1789 to George W. Bush's inauguration of 2001.

"It's Toasted"

I have recently started watching Madmen, an AMC series that "follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising ...." I was struck by an scene early in the first season where lead character Don Draper meets with executives of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Discouraged by the recent exposure of the "health risks" of smoking, the company must try a different approach to advertising. Their ads featuring physicians claiming that Lucky Strike are less irritating must be replaced. After a few minutes of brainstorming, Don comes up with the phrase "it's toasted." A few weeks before seeing this episode, I came across an exhibit curated by the Stanford School of Medicine and on display in the New York Public Library through the end of December. Not a Cough in a Carload: Images from the Tobacco Industry Campaign to Hide the Hazards of Smoking tells "the story of how [principally through advertising images] between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, tobacco companies used deceptive and often patently false claims in an effort to reassure the public of the safety of their products." The ads in this exhibit illustrate social norms and gender roles of the early to mid 20th century. Check out the exhibit at http://lane.stanford.edu/tobacco/index.html.

Harding Home

On November 13 we visited the Marion, Ohio home of Warren G. Harding and made a stop at the Harding Tomb, a white marble monument designed with similar features of a Greek temple.

Harding is often ranked at or near the bottom of the list of American presidents. We learned that his designation as possibly the worst president to date is based on scandalous actions of his cabinet members and possible personal indiscretion. Are scholars considering Harding's high approval rating at the time of his death in office, the founding of the Veterans' Bureau under his administration, or the establishment of the Bureau of Budget to help curtail federal expenditures?

In the tradition of grand presidential tombs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Harding's memorial was complete with funding of public donations in 1927. However, the tomb was not dedicated until 1931, as President Coolidge was unwilling to preside over the dedication ceremony in fear of too closely associating himself with the Harding administration.