Art Resources
Resources from National Gallery of Art
These include lesson plans and activities, teaching packets, videos, classroom posters, art for the classroom, and information about high school programs.
Incredible Art
This site has handouts, lessons, a community forum and much more for the art teacher.
The Art Project
The Art Project powered by Google features interior tours of seventeen world famous art museums. Select a museum from the list on the homepage and you can virtually tour it using the same interface style you experience in Google Maps Streetview. Inside the museum just double click to zoom to a location. You can also open a floor plan overview and click on a room to navigate to that part of the museum. The best part of the Art Project powered by Google is the option to create your own artwork collection while visiting each museum. As you’re touring a museum click on the “+” symbol on any work of art see it in greater detail, to add it to your collection, and to open background information about that work of art. To create a collection you must be signed into your Google account.
Smarthistory
Smarthistory is a free online alternative to expensive art history textbooks. Smarthistory was developed by art history professors Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Smarthistory features more than just images of notable works of art. Videos lessons, VoiceThread lessons, and audio lessons about eras and themes in art history are what make Smarthistory a valuable resource. Students can browse all of the resources of Smarthistory by artist name, style of work, theme, or time period. Smarthistory is now partnered with Khan Academy to deliver lessons.
Picturing America
Picturing America is a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association. Picturing America is an interactive gallery of artwork related to events, people, and themes in American history. You can browse the gallery chronologically or by theme. Click on any image in the gallery to learn about the artist and the artwork itself. Along with the background information for each image, Picturing America provides links to additional resources for learning about the artwork and artists.
The World Digital Library
The World Digital Library hosts nearly 5,000 primary documents and images from collections around the world. Sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the mission of the World Digital Library is to promote the study and understanding of cultures. The WDL can be searched by date, era, country, continent, topic, and type of resource. In my search of the WDL I noticed that roughly half of the resources are historical maps and images. The WDL aims to be accessible to as many people as possible by providing search tools and content descriptions in seven languages. The WDL can also be searched by clicking through the map on the homepage.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has a great collection of multimedia, interactive features about art and artists. In these features you can learn about styles of art, specific works, and the artists. There is a mix of videos and slideshows contained in the interactive archive. The archive contains features about Picasso and Pollock as well as artists whose works aren’t quite as famous.
Art Babble
Art Babble is a video website designed and maintained by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The purpose of Art Babble is to provide a place for people to learn about the creation of art, artists, and collections through quality video productions. Visitors to Art Babble will find videos related to many forms of and formats for art. Browse the video channels and you’ll find videos covering a wide array of topics including abstract art, European Art and Design, African Art, graphic design, glass, sculpture, surrealism, and much more.
Museum of Online Museums
MOOM, the Museum of Online Museums, is a list of museums that offer online exhibitions. In some cases the museums include virtual tours and in other cases the museums online exhibits are simple photo galleries. Some of the notable museums featured in the Museum of Online Museums include the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
This site offers an abundance of lesson plans and curriculum resources. It allows you to search for resources and lessons using a timeline, map, subject area, grade, collection area, or theme. It also has specific pages that may be of interest for teens.
EdSITEment
This site, sponsored by the National Endowment for the arts, has a wealth of resources for multiple content areas. It has a library of humanities lesson plans that you can sort by subject, theme, and grade level. These subjects include Art & Culture lessons on anthropology, art history, folklore, mythology, religion, and more World Language lessons on languages and the cultures of which they are a part; History & Social Studies lessons on American (including our popular AP U.S. History index) and World History, civics, government and society; and Literature & Language Arts lessons, including AP Literature offerings, on great writing and great literary works throughout the ages.
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian’s website offers lesson plans for four specific areas: art and design, science and technology, history and culture, and language arts. You can search by grade level, subject area, key terms, or even state standards. Lesson ideas can be downloaded in PDF format and offer links to other relevant sites for the lesson.
50 Art Blogs
This comprehensive list shares 50 blogs that cover every grade level and area of art education.
Student Art Guide: Best Teacher Blogs
This is another great source that shares ideas for blogging in the art classroom and connects with teacher blogs specifically. It also has many helpful resources for lesson planning, too.