Question for Understanding
How do visual specialists understand and appreciate this?

Activity Ideas for All Students
Ask students to tell about times when they learned from an expert, that is, someone with specialized knowledge and skills.  Explain that an art specialist can both help them better understand art and also help them improve their own art making.  In addition to artists and craftspeople, explain that art specialists also include art teachers, art historians, people who work in art museums and galleries, people who write about art in newspapers and magazines, and others.

Show the DVD segment, “Experienced and Informed,” asking students to take note of the qualifications or credentials of the people whose ideas are presented, for example, art writers, reviewers, or art historians.  Give students practice and feedback by using some or all of the interactive “Experienced and Informed” 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 the responses of experts applies to old and new art.

In preparation for a short paper or report, ask students to use insights from art specialists to help them more fully understand and appreciate an artist whose work they admire.   Reports should include the name of an artist, photocopies or other reproductions of the artist’s work, quotations from at least one art specialist about the work of the artist, identification of the credentials of the art specialist (artist, art historian, museum curator, etc.), and an explanation of how the specialist’s perspective helped the student better appreciate the work.

Activity Ideas for Art Students
If possible, invite an art specialist (fellow art teacher, artist, local arts commission member, museum docent, art historian, etc.) to class to share specialized art knowledge or skills with your students.  Be sure to mention the educational background of the guest in your introduction, so students will understand some of the ways that art specialists gain their knowledge and skills. After the visit, lead a follow-up discussion of new insights learned from the guest art specialist.  Explain some of the ways that students can increase their own specialized art knowledge and skills, such as art classes, museum lectures, reading and Internet exploration, art schools, university programs, studying with a master craftsman, etc.

Complementary Activities from Stories of Art
A K-12 curriculum resource from CRIZMAC
The theme, Powerful Families, is based on “Lord of the West,” a story of a young woman who succeeds in making her own statement following the rules of others and in so doing builds a bridge between two cultures.

Supplementary Online Lessons
“Who Cares for Art” – The inquiry track challenges students to articulate their own focused inquiry questions