Guided gallery visits are led by a Museum educator in the Brooklyn Museum’s galleries. Lessons are designed to encourage close looking and in-depth discussions and allow students to interpret art and its cultural context through strategies such as open-ended and guided questions, storytelling, sensory learning, writing, and drawing. Students focus on three to five objects to develop their observation and critical thinking skills. These guided gallery visits support the NYC Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts (Visual Art), as well as several New York State Learning Standards in Art, English Language Arts, and Social Studies. The Brooklyn Museum is also able to support teachers and schools as they work toward aligning curriculum and instructional priorities with Common Core State Standards. Please inform the Museum educator assigned to your class about adapting lessons to meet your specific curricular needs. To learn more, see our school visit information page, and check out the guided visits for grades K–2.
Recommended for Grades 3–12 (Lessons are ninety minutes in length)
African Art and Community
Visit the installation African Innovations. Students will view objects associated with ideas and themes such as responsibility, royalty, justice, education, masquerade, and village life to discover how art is used as a tool to maintain important social relationships.
Art and Religion in Asia
Students will view a variety of objects in the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Islamic galleries. Using these objects as visual and historical resources, they will compare and contrast how these cultures have conveyed spiritual ideas through artistic conventions. Topics may include ancestor worship, spirituality and nature, and the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia.
Art and Writing
Younger students will explore the choices that artists and authors make when telling a story; examine character, setting, main idea, and point of view in the Museum’s collections; and use their observations to develop their writing skills. Older students will use the Museum’s collections and special exhibitions to explore the stylistic relationship between art and writing and investigate the creative and critical aspects of each to address their descriptive, reflective, and analytical possibilities.
Art and the Environment
Examine the relationship between humans and the environment and the representation of nature through objects in the Museum’s collections of African, Asian, and Islamic art. Students will focus on animal and plant imagery, discuss the materials from which objects were made, and relate these to the natural environment in which the objects were created.
Art in Ancient Egypt: Daily Life
Students will learn about the daily lives of ancient Egyptians by examining visual imagery on funerary objects. Work, the environment, clothing, food, and family life are among the themes that may be explored.
Art in Ancient Egypt: Signs and Symbols
This lesson examines how ancient Egyptian artists and scribes used visual imagery on funerary objects to ensure protection and care for the deceased in the afterlife. Ancient narrative, hieroglyphs, mummification, and burial customs are featured.
Art and Society
Engage with artworks that express themes about the human condition. Students will examine how artists convey meaning and evoke empathy through their use of imagery and material. This lesson may include figurative and abstract artworks that refer to everyday life, moral choices, and human relationships.
Artists' Choices
Focus on the wide array of choices made by artists throughout the Museum’s galleries. Students will compare and contrast artworks of similar subjects and discuss the different techniques each artist used in creating a point of view, mood, and meaning.
Arts of the Ancient World
Students will interpret and analyze artifacts to compare important ideas, social and cultural values, beliefs, and traditions of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Asia.
Careers in an Art Museum
Learn about the various roles of museum employees, including curators, designers, educators, and conservators. By examining exhibitions, students will observe evidence of the work of these museum professionals. Students will have an opportunity to role-play and develop some of the skills needed for careers in an art museum.
From Colony to Nation: Art as a Primary Resource
Students will study a range of American paintings and decorative arts objects to explore how they reflect people’s daily lives and the artistic production of particular times and places in American history. Specific themes such as westward expansion, the American Civil War, immigration, or industrialization can be examined as a part of this lesson. Please specify any such theme on your reservation form.
Journey Down the Silk Road
Objects from China, India, and the Middle East vividly evoke the exchange of goods and ideas along the Silk Road. By studying design and function, students will understand how ceramics, carpets, manuscripts, and other objects served as ambassadors for their cultures.
Living and Working in Early America
Visit the Museum’s collection of early American period rooms, including two Dutch Brooklyn houses, and learn about the function and significance of American architecture and decorative arts. Through drawing, discussion, and group work, students will reflect on their own experiences while exploring artistic, social, historical, and industrial developments in Brooklyn and other places in America over the past several hundred years.
The Big Picture
Discover what makes the Brooklyn Museum a unique cultural resource. Students will explore the building’s architecture, the collections of objects from around the world, and other resources such as the Museum’s Library and Archives. They will also discuss the process of gaining knowledge through direct experience with art objects.
Women and Art
Compare and contrast artworks created by, for, and about women, including The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. This lesson may explore the meaning of feminism as well as the themes of women as artists and women as subjects in art. There is a limit of fifteen students per group.
Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
