Chrysler Building, New York City, 1930

Picturing America Resources

Art Access
Art Access, an Art Institute of Chicago Education department website, is arranged by subject matter. Click on a link to open a page with essays on selected works, a link to lesson plans, online family activities, a glossary and maps. Artists covered include Bearden, Cassatt, Copley, Homer, Lawrence, Sargent, Tiffany, and Whistler.

Conferences for Educators
The National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored several national conferences for teachers and school librarians, which were held in Boston by Primary Source, in Chicago by the Newberry Library, and in Newark by the Newark Musuem. The conferences provided training opportunities for educators who have already received the Picturing America collection. Primary Source has videos and other resources available online from its conference in Boston.

EDSITEment
EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. The site offers a treasure trove for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies. Please the EDSITEment links on the Picturing America site to access to special resources related to Picturing America, as well as to the Picturing America Bookshelf.

Grade-by-Grade Guide to Building Visual Arts Lessons
This Getty Museum Education department website is designed for K–12 teachers who wish to introduce art and art history into their classrooms. The site uses works from the museum’s collection along with pages A Grade-by-Grade Guide, The Elements of Art (teaching the formal components of art such as line and color), and a PDF file, Lesson Template. Also included are pages for California State Content Standards and National Standards in the Visual Arts. Lesson plans for Grades 1–2 and 9–12 use the photography of Dorothea Lange.

Themes in American Art
A National Gallery of Art Web site, Themes in American Art covers topics such as abstraction, historical subjects, narrative art, and portraiture; illustrated by works in the collection. Includes a glossary.

NEH Picturing America website
Created by NEH, the Picturing America website offers a wealth of project-based resources for teachers, school librarians, and other educators.

NEH Teacher’s Resource Guide
The Picturing America Teachers Resource Guide (PDF) is published by NEH and has been provided to all Picturing America grant recipients. This link includes a complete PDF version of the Guide.

Picturing America Image Download Gallery
The image download gallery contains digital files of many of the artworks featured in Picturing America. This copyrighted material may only be accessed by public librarians participating in NEH’s Picturing America initiative for conducting free educational library presentations during the project term. If your public library has received Picturing America, you may log in or register for a user account. Non-grantees, school libraries, and homeschools will not have access to image files.

Picturing America Image Introductions
Staff at the Wilbraham Public Library recorded Picturing America image introductions that correspond with many of the American artwork featured in the collection. This link includes audio files for download.

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)
VTS offers a structured, widely respected, research-based method to support viewers of any age in making meaning out of what they see. The necessary ingredients are a group, a facilitator, and an interesting image. For more information, visit Visual Thinking Strategies or read about how the District of Columbia Public Library staff used VTS to enhance their Picturing America programs.

We the People Bookshelf on Picturing America
Each year, NEH identifies a theme important to the nation’s heritage and selects books that embody that theme to build the We the People Bookshelf, a collection of classic books for young readers. The theme for the 2008–2009 Bookshelf was “Picturing America.” This site contains the K–12 reading list, programming ideas, and links to curriculum resources.