Question for Understanding
What do people think, believe, and do in the maker’s culture?

Art Making Question
If you were thinking about making an artwork, how might it reflect or respond to your culture?

Objective
Students recognize cultural factors that can affect how artworks are made.

Activity Ideas for All Students
Explain that people who live together are familiar with many of the same people, places, activities, and ideas.  Show the DVD segment, “Cultures Here and Now / There and Then,” asking students to be prepared to compare and contrast the cultural backgrounds of the artists.  Give students practice and feedback by using some or all of the interactive “Cultures Here and Now / There and Then,” CD activities, which you can project for an entire class or which individual students can view in a computer lab. Students can use the CD to 1) review what they learned on the DVD, 2) apply what they learned to their everyday visual world, and 3) recognize how inquiry into cultural context applies to old and new art.

As the basis for a group presentation, ask groups of students to explore diverse cultures within their communities, as possible, interviewing key individuals about important people, events, values, and the like shared by many in the community.

Ask groups of students to choose a culture or cultures out of which great art has sprung, for example, the Italian Renaissance, Mexico between World War I and World War II, the Mughal Empire of India, or ancient Ethiopia.  As the basis for a class presentation they should use the Internet and other sources to find artworks made in their culture. They should also investigate important people, place, activities, and ideas of their culture and identify ways that art reflects and sometimes even leads culture.

Activity Ideas for Art Students
Ask students to seek inspiration for their own art from their own cultures or from cultures they admire.

Complementary Activities from Stories of Art
A K-12 curriculum resource from CRIZMAC
The theme, When Cultures Meet, is based on “A New Home,” a story of cultural upheaval and a the struggle of the members of a family to find their place as strangers in an unfamiliar culture.