Each year, the Columbus Museum of Art and Columbus City Schools partner for ARTful Reading, an experience that connects every CCS 5th grader to the art and ideas of the CMA, in ways that promote deep thinking, literacy skills, and key creativity habits like observation, critical thinking, imagination, and collaboration.
Each year we choose an additional focus, and this year we are exploring how we might kindle empathy by applying museum learning strategies to portraits.
We will spark our ability and inclination to understand one another by slowing down, noticing, finding connections, developing many possible stories, and imagining with art other people.
Since we are not able to welcome your students for an in-person ARTful Reading visit this spring, we’ve created a video to help you spark these types of thinking in your classroom.
Tips for Use:
The companion creativity challenge for visual art is Inspection Specs. Fifth grade teachers and art teachers should decide together how they would like to use and build on this video and the Inspections Specs challenge.
We hope this pair of activities helps you tap into the power of slowing down with art to develop empathy and catalyze imagination.
Let us know if you have questions, or if you have feedback to share!
Keep imagining,
Jen & the CMA Learning crew
ARTful Reading is a partnership between the Columbus Museum of Art and Columbus City Schools. Support comes from the Reinberger Foundation.
This year’s ARTful Reading is inspired by CCS’s Portrait of a Graduate pillar of developing Global Empathy, CMA’s teacher collaboration, Cultivating Creative & Civic Capacities, and the opportunities art presents as a catalyst for storytelling.
Image credit: Abdi Roble, Boys in Pool, Columbus, July 2004. Gelatin silver print. Museum Purchase, Derby Fund