Washington DC: National Gallery of Art (Docent)

We spent a good amount of time at the National Gallery of Art. The first hour of our visit was spent with a museum docent, in small groups, looking in detail at a work of art. I was desperately hoping to do the activity with the paintings of London, and was thrilled that this was assigned to my group!

The following is an activity delivered by the docent - not created by me - but easily recreated by you!

Claude Monet's Houses of Parliament

André Derain's Charing Cross Bridge

As a Londoner, I have been passed this location many times. I know it inside out. I've been inside the houses of parliament many times and walked and bussed over Charing Cross Bridge more times than I can count. It was interesting for me to hear the students reflections throughout the process, especially those that did not know the location.

Here is what we did:

• We first looked at Monet's painting for only 7 seconds (this is the average time people look at works of art in the gallery)
• We shared out our first impressions
• We then had a few minutes to Monet's painting for a longer period of time, then shared back the new details and thoughts that emerged
• We each took a piece of paper, and draw the horizon line on it
• We then scrunched up the paper and passed it to another person
• We unraveled the paper and were asked to sketch roughly one section of the image that interested us
• We scrunched up the paper and passed it again
• We used an eraser to add light to the image
• We shared out what we noticed from this activity.

After this we

• Were introduced to Derain's painting
• We spent time, with the person next to us, noting down similarities and differences between the two paintings
• We then came up with questions and wonderings about the images
• Finally we wrote one word or phrase which described the experience and shared them out as a group

The National Gallery of Art have many educational resources, including information for High School groups visiting and lessons you can do in your classrooms.

You can also explore over 42,000 pieces from their collection through the Google Cultural Institute here.