PRE-VISIT MATERIALS

MUSEUM MYSTERIES

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Tour DescriptionDocent-guided tours at the Speed Art Museum invite everyone to look closely, engage in conversations, and discover connections between artworks and the world. Our school tours are designed to inspire curiosity, build visual literacy skills, encourage students to connect personally with art, and help students see the way art relates to other subjects. Students will visit five or six artworks during their docent-guided tour, and they will participate in interactive gallery experiences that will allow them to experience the Speed’s collection in fun and thought-provoking ways.

Our tour for 6th-8th graders is called Museum Mysteries. During a Museum Mysteries tour, students will learn to stop, look closely, and unravel mysteries that the average visitor might not solve! Why do the eyes in that portrait seem to follow you? What do those symbols on the sculpture mean? Just what is that creature in the center of the painting? Middle school students will explore unusual works from across the world with an eye toward what qualities make those pieces so unique. As they work closely with their peers and engage in interactive gallery activities, students will also examine principles like proportion, texture, and dimension to understand various artists’ unconventional choices.

In addition to a docent-guided tour, your students will also have one of the following experiences:

• If you have scheduled Hands-On Art-Making, your students will make artistic choices themselves: collaborating on teams in our studio, students will create their own three-dimensional hybrid beasts.

• If you have scheduled self-guided time, your students will be able to enjoy the interactive exhibits in Art Sparks.

Pre-Visit ConversationTo help prepare your students for their Museum Mysteries tour, we recommend first reviewing some gallery guidelines. The Art Institute of Chicago has a great video that you can show to help students get ready for their trip! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3G85Umn4Js

You can also prepare your students by leading a short conversation that introduces the theme of your tour. You might tell them that they will have a chance to think like detectives as they examine artworks from the Speed’s collection.

• What types of mysteries might we expect to discover at an art museum?• What are some of the things that detectives use or do to help them

solve mysteries? How might we use some of these same ideas during our tour of the Speed?

• How can we examine an artwork even if we don’t know a lot of information about it? What can we learn about an artwork just by looking at it?

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Practice looking at an artwork togetherShow students this image of Jacob van Ruisdael’s Landscape with a Half-Timbered House and a Blasted Tree, created in 1653: http://www.speedmuseum.org/collections/landscape-with-a-half%e2%80%91timbered-house-and-a-blasted-tree

• Give students one minute to look at this artwork. While looking, students should make a list of everything that they see. After a minute has passed, hide the image from the students. What all did they see?

• After everyone has had a chance to share, show students the image again. What items did they miss during their first look? What else can they find?

• If this painting was just one scene from a movie, what might happen in the next scene? Have students write or act out their ideas based on clues that they see in the painting.

Additional Information About Landscape with a Half-Timbered House and a Blasted TreeJacob van Ruisdael was the preeminent Dutch landscape painter in the 17th century. He was known for the expressiveness and grand nature of his paintings. In this painting, he turns his eye to the rugged terrain and distinctive houses that he saw along the Dutch-German border. The patched roof, blasted willow tree, and gray clouds all reveal the effects of bad weather.

Extension Activities• Have students practice their descriptive skills by participating in this fun activity.

Working in pairs, one student will be the “Drawer” and the other will be the “Describer.” The Describer will describe a common everyday item to their partner, who will attempt to draw it based only on the description. After the drawing is complete, the Drawer and Describer should look together at the drawing and the object. What could the Describer have done differently to better help the Drawer?

• Students can also practice describing themselves. Have each student write a short autobiography that describes some aspect of his/her life. Read the statements aloud—can the rest of the class determine who wrote each autobiography?

• Ask students to come up with an object or symbol that they feel encapsulates their personality. What does this symbol reveal about them? Can the rest of the class guess to whom each symbol belongs?

• Select an everyday object and hide it somewhere out of view. Give students one clue about the object, and then invite them to ask “yes or no” questions—in the style of 21 Questions—to see if they can discover what object you described. By brushing up on asking questions, your students will be more comfortable asking questions in the galleries at the Speed!

Image Caption:Jacob van Ruisdael, Landscape with a Half-Timbered House and a Blasted Tree, 1653Oil on canvasSpeed Art Museum Collection, 1998.3

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