The Phillips Education Department works with about 5,000 students a year through its school tour programs that combine modern art, innovative pedagogy, and a personalized approach. Cross-curricular themed tours are available for school groups from kindergarten through eighth grade. High-school teachers may request guided tours that focus on topics relevant to their classroom objectives.
Docents leading the tours use hands-on activities in the galleries that engage students and appeal to multiple styles of learning. Students may listen to music, perform mapping exercises, or act out scenes from paintings. Activities bring art to life, emphasize 21st-century skills in critical thinking and problem solving, speaking and listening, and cooperative learning. Interactive questioning strategies help students develop personal interpretations and respect the opinions of others.
These dynamic programs may be adapted to the teacher’s needs. Docents contact teachers before the visit to discuss areas of interest and connection points to class objectives and standards. Standards that may be met include:
- English language arts (speaking and listening, writing, language development)
- Literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects
- Mathematics (counting and cardinality, measurement and data, geometry)
A limited number of bus stipends are available for Title I schools.
School tours must be reserved at least a month in advance.
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Reflecting on their own cities and communities, students explore modern artists’ interpretations of urban life. Paintings may include Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series and Paul Klee’s Way to the Citadel.
Grade level
- K‒8; tailored for grade level
Gallery activities may include
- Writing imaginative poems and stories
- Deciphering geometric shapes
- Drawing city shapes
- Creating symbols and maps
Curriculum connections
- Language arts: oral and written, creating meaning with symbols
- Social studies: communities (neighborhood and city), transportation, geography
- Visual arts: color, shape and pattern, architecture, perspective
Exploring the artistic process, students discuss how artists use their imaginations to transform observations of the real world into works of art. Paintings may include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party and Edgar Degas’s Dancers at the Barre.
Grade level
- K‒8; tailored for grade level
Gallery activities may include
- Writing poetry or letters
- Drawing
- Creating a narrative series
- Playing flash-card or other in-gallery games
- Language arts: oral and written, narrative structure, vocabulary, symbols
- Social studies: migration
- Visual arts: color, mood, perspective
Considering how and why artists create narratives in paintings, students talk about Jacob Lawrence’s use of color, pattern, and shape to tell the story of the Great Migration. After engaging in conversation and activities in the galleries while examining The Migration Series and other works of art, students create collages in the art workshop and experiment with making artistic choices to communicate personal stories.
GRADE LEVEL- K‒8; tailored for grade level
- Organizing narrative structure
- Reading a book and comparing narrative structures of books and art
- Making a collage based on one of Lawrence's captions
- Language arts: oral and written, narrative structure, sequencing
- Social studies: migration and immigration, segregation and discrimination, community, transportation, geography
- Visual arts: visual narrative, series, color, shape and pattern
Celebrating Duncan Phillips’s vision of the museum as a “joy-giving, life-enhancing influence, assisting people to see beautifully as true artists see,” students use in-gallery activities to explore Phillips’s approach to collecting and exhibiting art. Students then make hands-on connections to the big ideas discussed in the galleries by creating a work of art in the art workshop. This program may include works by Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
GRADE LEVEL
- K‒8; tailored for grade level
GALLERY ACTIVITIES MAY INCLUDE
- Writing imaginative dialogues and stories
- Creating collaborative felt collages
- Drawing
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
- Language arts: oral and written, creating dialogue and narrative, vocabulary
- Social studies: communities (neighborhood and city), history, tradition
- Visual arts: Color, shape, line, mood, architecture