Welcome to Your museumA Resource Guide for Teachers

Goals of this Resource GuideOne goal of this guide is to help teachers prepare students to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where they will participate in a docent-

guided tour entitled Welcome to Your Museum. Students will see works of art created in different times and from different places.

A second goal of the guide is to help teachers relate aspects of

the tour to their school’s curriculum.

About the Tour

Docents offer this 50 minute tour for students in grades 1–5. During the tour students will develop their visual and verbal skills as they learn to look at and talk about art, discovering line, shape, and color. The tour themes are selected to engage students’

imaginations and to assist them in discovering how art relates to their world. Welcome to Your Museum

meets state content standards for history/social science and visual arts for grades 2-3.

About the

Museum

LACMA is the largest encyclopedic museum in the western United States with more than 100,000 works of art. Through its far-reaching collections, the museum is both a resource to and a reflection of the many cultural communities and heritages in Southern California. The collection includes artworks from various cultures from the prehistoric to the present.

Suggested classroom activities before the museum visit

Have students name the elements of art listed in the glossary and explain their meanings.

As a class identify the elements of art in the reproductions. Explain that the museum tour will provide a similar opportunity to look for these and other elements. A docent at the museum will discuss how the artist’s use of the elements can help the viewer explore the meanings of artworks.

Compare two of the artworks with the class. Ask them to identify

similarities and differences in the images.

GlossaryColor

The visual sensation dependent on the reflection or absorption of light from a given surface. Color is made up of hue, intensity, and

value.Hue—refers to the name of the color (red, blue, yellow, orange)Intensity—refers to the brightness or dullness of a colorValue— the lightness or darkness of a hue or neutral color

Line

One of the elements of art. Lines vary in length and direction. Lines can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. They can describe structure or gesture, the outline of a shape or create patterns.

Material

Artists use a variety of materials and tools to create art. Some

materials are common and inexpensive (such as clay) while others are costly (gold and jewels). Artists select their materials to support the intention of the work.

Shape

Geometric shapes such as circles, triangles, and rectangles, or freeform shapes, appear in many different kinds of art. They may form the underlying structure of the composition, or define certain parts. Shapes that are repeated establish patterns.

Texture

One of the elements of art. Texture is the way a surface feels or appears to feel. Texture can range from smooth and soft to rough and hard.

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About the Image:

This is one panel from a series of five Assyrian bas-reliefs from the ninth-century that once decorated the inner walls of the northwest palace of Ashurnasirpal

II (r. 883–

859 BCE). The site of ancient Calah (now called Nimrud), located on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, was an ancient capital of Assyria probably founded in the thirteenth century BC. The city was developed under the reign of Ashurnasirpal

II, who erected his great northwest palace on earlier ruins. Built of mud brick on stone foundations, the palace was embellished on its lower levels with a series of decorated slabs (from the upper Tigris quarries) that depicted the monarch’s skill as a hunter/warrior, as a servant of the gods, and as a mighty king. One of the five panels depicts the king with a learned man. In one hand, the king holds a libation bowl; in his other hand, he holds his bow, symbol of royal prowess. A long inscription in cuneiform on the reliefs has come to be known as Ashurnasirpal’s

“standard inscription”

because it was repeated so frequently throughout the palace; it mentions the king’s prayer and his deeds in founding the city of Calah.

Ashurnasirpal

II and a winged Deity 883–859 BCE

Iraq, Nimrud

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About the Image:

This sarcophagus, or coffin is made of sycamore wood and shaped in the form of a human outline. The head, hands, and feet are modeled in high relief. The figure's plaited beard, a reference to the god Osiris, most likely identifies it as a male's coffin. The space in the inscription on the lid's footboard that would have been reserved for the name of the coffin's owner has been left blank, leaving his identity a mystery.

The sarcophagus and the process of mummification were central to ancient Egyptians' beliefs about the afterlife. The Egyptians believed that in the afterlife, the pharaohs became one with Re and were likewise reborn with him at sunrise. While only the pharaohs journeyed with Re through the nighttime hours, all Egyptians faced the same dangers on their journey to the afterlife. Instructions for the elaborate preparations necessary to safe passage from life into the afterlife were found in the Book of the Dead. .

Coffin Mid-21st

Century (About 1000–968 BCE)

Egypt, Likely Thebes

Round-Topped Stela Mid-18th Dynasty,

reign of Amenhotep

III, circa 1391 -

1353 BCE

About the Image:

This stela, a flat slab of stone with a commemorative purpose, was created for Luef-Er-Bak, who is depicted by the figure on the right and identified by the hieroglyphs at the top. The stela

was carved during the reign of King Amenhotep

III in the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1391-1353 B.C.E.). This stable and prosperous period is considered to represent the height of ancient Egyptian artistic production. The stela

was probably made for the necropolis (city of the dead) of Western Thebes, where it would have been placed in the tomb of the deceased.

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About the Image:

The painting shows a boy leaning on a window ledge and blowing a bubble from a reed with absorbed concentration. As he carefully eyes the expanding bubble, a young child strains to watch over the ledge. It could well be a scene the artist observed in his native Paris, but the subject also belongs to a long tradition of European iconography, the bubble as a symbol of the fragility and vanity of human life.

Soap Bubbles After 1739

Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin

About The Image:

Centaur

straddles the border between painting and sculpture. Picasso used discarded film equipment to assemble this mythological creature, half horse, half man –

it has a lens box for its head and a light stand for its neck and four legs. Picasso experimented in combining painted forms with found objects and manmade materials in 3-D form and is often considered an extension of cubist collage –

today we call this technique assemblage.

Centaur 1955

Pablo Picasso

MULHOLLAND DRIVE: THE ROAD TO THE STUDIO 1980

David Hockney

About the Image:

British-born artist David Hockney's

great affection for the city of Los Angeles, his home since the

1960s, is evident in the many works that draw upon its cultural iconography: luxurious swimming pools, sun-drenched landscapes, and handsome young men at play. Painted from memory in just a few weeks, Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio

, the largest of Hockney's

canvases, vividly captures the quintessential Los Angeles activity: driving. It is

a personalized panoramic map of Los Angeles based on the artist's daily trip from his home in the Hollywood Hills to his studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. Hockney establishes a sense of distance by alternating between detailed renderings of objects (trees, houses, tennis courts, and power lines) that represent sections of the landscape and more abstract planes of color or simple grids that

define the outlying Studio City and Burbank. Mulholland Drive swirls across the top of the work, moving the viewer's eye from left to right and conveying the sense of motion and altitude that the artist experienced on the ridge road.

Follow-up ActivitiesAfter the museum visit

Postcards

Have students create postcards featuring their favorite work or art from the tour. On one side have them draw a picture of their chosen piece and on the reverse they can write a letter to a friend or family member describing the colors, shape, lines and textures and of the object. Have students explain why they liked the work.

Additional Images and information about objects

on your tour can be found by Visiting Collections

Online at

www.lacma.org

Stair and Fountain in the Park of a Roman Villa

Hubert Robert

Standing Warrior

Mexico, Jalisco

Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze

Tea

Henri Matisse

The Liberator

Rene Magritte

Burn, Baby, Burn

Matta

Apocalyptic Landscape

Ludwig Meidner

Weeping Woman

Pablo Picasso

LACMA General InformationPlease review these regulations with students before arriving at

the museum.

Museum Rules•

No touching works of art including outdoor sculpture. Viewers must not come closer than 24 inches to any work of art.

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No touching walls or any parts of installations. No sitting on platforms in the galleries or gardens.•

No eating, drinking, smoking, gum-chewing, excess noise, or running in the galleries.•

All groups must comply with instructions or requests from docents, gallery attendants or security staff.•

Teachers and chaperones must stay with the students at all times

and are responsible for student behavior.•

Student assignments that require note taking are not permitted during a docent tour.

Arriving at the Museum•

Plan to arrive at the museum at least 15 minutes before the tour

is scheduled to begin.•

The museum is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard where buses should arrive for students to disembark. •

Enter the museum at the BP Grand Entrance on Wilshire Boulevard in front of Urban Light. A docent will meet your bus when it arrives.

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Buses should park on 6th Street, which is one block north of Wilshire Boulevard.•

Cars may park on surrounding streets or in the pay parking lot at 6th Street.

Lunch•

Picnicking is permitted at the tables outside the Ahmanson Building, the BP Grand Entrance or in the park, and students are welcome to bring sack lunches. Seating is not permitted in the Café

or the surrounding patio. Box lunches may be purchased from the Café. Orders must be placed one week before your arrival. Please contact the Plaza Café

(323) 857-6197.

Museum Reentry•

If you are planning to visit the galleries after your guided tour please present a copy of your confirmation letter at the Welcome Center on the BP Grand Entrance, or the Los Angeles Times Central Court, to receive free admission tickets. Your group may not enter the galleries until 12 noon when the museum opens to the public.

Enjoy your visit