How-To: Use the Online Collection

The Yale Center for British Art’s vast online collection is a great resource to use in the classroom. Here are step-by-step instructions with images to walk you through a topical search of the online collection.

Step 1: Go to the Yale Center for British Art website. You can click here, or type in http://britishart.yale.edu/ into your web browser.

Step 2: Under “Collections,” select “Search.” You can also click on “Highlights,” “Using the Collection,” and “Related Resources” to find other materials and information that can help you in the classroom. Step 2_Collections and Search

Step 3: After clicking on “Search,” the “Search All Collections” webpage will come up. You might use this search if you are looking for a specific painting or various works by one artist. Searching all collections will give you artwork and literature across all mediums. To narrow your search, look to the right hand column and decide what you are looking for.

Step 3_The search page

Step 4: For this example, we will search the “Paintings and Sculptures.” Selecting this will send us to the “Paintings and Sculptures,” search page. As you can see, selecting a medium will allow for even more options to narrow your search and find exactly what you are looking for.

Step 3_seaching paintings and sculpture

Step 5: Search for the paintings and sculptures that you want to see. By clicking on the “Classification” or “Genre” options, a dropbox menu will appear with various options that have already by pre-selected. These can be helpful in coming up with ideas, or you can choose to type in your own original search. For this example, we will look for Animals in Art. We can see that there is an option for “animal art” in the “Genre” menu.
Step 5_Selecting a genre

Step 6: After selecting “animal art” and clicking on Find, we are sent to a page with all of the paintings and sculptures that are categorized under the “animal art” genre. Remember, you can narrow down your search even further by providing more information in the search page. You can also narrow down your search using the various options on the right side of the Search Results page.

Step 6_search results

Step 7: Select an image from the Search Results page to learn more about the artwork. Many of the pieces that are part of the Permanent Collection here at the British Art Center have images that can be downloaded and used for your use in the classroom. Simply click on the “Download” option underneath the image, and select how you would like to download the image. Images that the British Art Center does not have rights to will not be available to download.

Step 8_Selecting an Image

The online collection is a valuable resource that the Yale Center for British Art provides and understanding how to search the collection is necessary in utilizing this resource. Please feel free to comment with any questions about the online collection and how to use it.

Sky Lessons: Using Paintings to Teach Setting

CloudDance

Illustration from Cloud Dance by Thomas Locker

 

“The sky settles everything – not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful.”

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

The background of a painting is much like a setting in writing: it pulls you in, and puts you somewhere specific. We tell our students that “setting” is the time and place in a piece of writing. But it is more than that: it is an anchor for the reader. I like teaching setting by focusing on the sky. The sky is a great equalizer: we all see it, at all times of day and night, in all kinds of weather. It affects our moods and our actions. The collection of  paintings selected by Sara Torkelson in this pinterest board are a perfect way to show students of all ages how powerful the sky can be.

Continue reading Sky Lessons: Using Paintings to Teach Setting

Clouds and Skies

 

“Blue needs sun,

Without it,

Blue hides.

Then,

suddenly,

sparkling spring sky!”

-Joyce Sidman, Excerpt from Red Sings from Treetops, A Year in Colors

 

Check out our newest Pinterest post about Clouds and Skies here! This is just a small sample of the many works that showcase the natural world around us. Check out the clouds and skies using our online collection here and here. There are various options for using these works in the classroom; stay tuned to our blog to see how other teachers have used our collection of clouds and skies at the YCBA in their classrooms. How will you use these artistic expressions of nature? Share with us your own ideas about Clouds and Skies in the classroom.

 

Here are some books for all ages that can easily accompany one of the Pinterest posts:

Birds, Kevin Henkes. Illustrated by Laura Dronzek.

Little Cloud, Eric Carle.

Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors, Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski.

Once Upon a Cloud, Rob D. Walker. Illustrated by Matt Mahurin.

It Looked Like Spilt Milk, Charles G. Shaw.

Columns

Seeing Cores

by James Shivers

Summary/Goals

Views. Perspectives. Students. Teachers. Lessons. Classroom space, digital space, spaces to explore.  The purpose of Seeing Cores is to provide practical, reflective resources for the 6-12 teacher.  These practices are attempts from and in a current classroom.  Seeing Cores is a space that seeks vibrant, challenging and engaging ways of bringing the Common Core into the classroom.

Outline & Direction of Posts

  • Explore the new content demands of fiction, non-fiction, and media can be facilitated by working directly with the visual arts
  • Provide ongoing snapshots into the day-to-day workings of visually integrated classroom
  • Discuss practical issues that arise –from supplies to technology—when embracing multimodal discourse
  • Discuss the pilot program framework and results of Expanding Literacies, Exploring Expression

Zooming In …

Posted by: Tom Lee
 
We spent an hour or so reading J.M.W. Turner’s “The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed” on the first day of the summer institute.  It’s a massive painting – over five feet tall and seven feet wide, and has a wall all to itself in the gallery.
 
turnerall
 
As the viewer in the gallery approaches the image from a distance, how does its narrative begin to unfold?  What  is the first impression the image makes?  What main ideas does it communicate at first sight?  Big sky, big ship – what’s happening here?
 
What surprised and delighted me as the group settled in and began to explore the image was how accessible the smallest details were.  Facial expressions on individual passengers on both ships – some rendered with a single stroke of Turner’s brush – became the focus of in depth discussions.  It was as if there were paintings within the paintings, like stories within a story.
 
boatwithinboat
 
Who are these people?  Are they approaching or departing?  Friendly or hostile?  Do they know one another, or are they strangers?  What inferences can we make based on the details of the clothing – the shape of the man’s hat, for example?  All of these questions began to emerge from the group.
 
We noticed, too, how masterfully the reflection of both the small boat and its passengers is executed.  The small patches of brilliant red and blue, and their reflections, are two of the brightest points in the whole painting.  In contrast, other reflections are blurred and vague.  Taken in isolation, they resemble some of Turner’s later masterpieces to my eye.
 
abstract reflection
 
Every picture certainly tells a story, but Turner’s sprawling canvas here becomes more like a novel, and its details become compelling subplots with vivid characters. 
 
How does this “zooming in” correlate to your classroom work?  Can you think of specific examples where this sort of  focus would support your teaching goals?
 
We look forward to reading your comments on this trial blog post!
 
NOTES:
 
I’ve discovered that my iPhone is an incredible useful – and fun – tool to have in a museum*.  Without a flash, and keeping a safe distance from the painting, I can photograph minute details, down to the smallest brush stroke or crack in the varnish.
 
*Most museums (including YCBA) allow non-flash photography of artworks in their permanent collection. (Artworks on loan from other institutions usually can’t be photographed.)
 
To see the full image on the museum’s website – click here: http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1667701