Art in the Picture, The National Gallery & Restoration Online

http://www.artinthepicture.com/

Art in the Picture is a very useful website for all things Art History. I like it because it has a search function that offers every artist, movement, country and century by which children could search. The main site also features a constantly changing art inspired quote, many of which are thought provoking and interesting. I know not every student has an interest in Art History, but I think quotes and features like these may spark an interest in certain students or help them connect to an artist.

This site also features a “Video of the Week.” This week, it is a 15 minute feature on Van Gogh. Again, not every student will find every video interesting, but there may be one or two over the course of the year that draws their attention or highlights an era, movement or artist they are somewhat interested in. This site could be a useful weekly tool in the classroom. We could finish every Friday class off with the video of the week and use it as an opportunity to learn something new about Art History and discuss what was watched as a class.

For purposes of a specific lesson, this site also features each major artist of a movement, offers some of their famous quotes, most well known paintings and biographies.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/

The National Gallery is a website for the museum which is located in London. Since that is not very accessible for us, at least their website still offers a great look into the museum itself, along with a bunch of other great features! This is another useful website for generating interest in Art History. This site is just about the next best thing to visiting The National Gallery itself. They even offer a Virtual Tour of inside their museum! It allows you to go throughout parts of the gallery, zoom in on a specific piece as if you are standing right in front of it, click on the art, and read more about it. I think this is a pretty incredible feature of the website and something students would enjoy as well. Using it, the students could go on a “Virtual Museum Visit.”

Here is a view from the Central Hall. Next, I can chose hover over the painting I want to find out more about, click, and get all the information I need!

Next I moved into a room that featured works from Venice. This feature allows you to feel like you are present in the museum. I think if students are in a classroom with access to computers, allowing them to “tour the museum” and writing about a few pieces they “viewed” would be a fun activity.

Aside from this feature, there are other great parts of this site, such as a Featured Artist of the Month, and ability to Explore Artists A-Z, information on Featured Exhibitions and much more. 

http://www.artsmia.org/restoration-online/

Restoration Online is a very interesting site that leads you through the process of the restoration of a classic work of art, and goes into depths to explain more about the process, the art, artist, etc. 

This would be a fun site to introduce to students that allows them to view the Restoration process from start to finish, along with more information about the painting itself. This site even breaks down the Restoration process from start to finish, including a daily log and a step by step explanation of how everything was completed. Since teachers are constantly searching for ways to bring reading and writing into every classroom, I think this site could provide for a useful assignment. An interesting way to incorporate this into the art classroom would be to allow each student to pick one piece of work they want to explore. Students will have to read about the Restoration process and the work, and then write up a small essay that briefly explains the process and the work. To also bring a creative aspect into this, I think I would then assign each student to try to recreate the artwork they chose in some way. Students could be offered the option to emulate the artists’ style of painting, subject matter, emotion or design, so they are not too limited in their creativity. I think this website and accompanying assignment could be a great lesson for students to really see the effort that is put into some of the great masters’ works of art in order to conserve them so we can enjoy them today.