How do teachers use Masterpiece Cards as an art history teaching tool?
To introduce art historical terminology (or Famous Paintings Dominoes): Hand each student a group of ten Cards. Place a sample Card on the table, and ask a student to select one of her paintings that matches the sample (i.e. in value, proportion, composition, etc.). The next student matches the first student's example, and so on. Great introduction to the visual analysis of paintings.
To identify specific terminology: ask students to find Cards that illustrate specific terms. Like chiaroscuro - and see if they identify it in la Tour's Magdalen with the Smoking Flame, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, and Caravaggio's The Conversion of St. Paul, for instance.
To review with a partner: 1. Break students into pairs. One student gets a Card
(secured in a Ziplock bag) taped onto his back, and asks yes/no questions to identify the hidden painting. See which pair asks the fewest questions! 2. One student reads the commentary on the back of the Card and his partner guesses which painting is being described. Bonus points for naming the year in which the work was created. 3. Play "Mystery Painter Hang Man".
To associate famous paintings and vocabulary with art movements: for each team, make 5 x 5" grids (roughly) on 18 x 24" paper. Into each cell, write different art movements, vocabulary words, etc. such as High Renaissance, tenebrism, Mannerism. Split the class into 4 teams, providing each a random stack of Masterpiece Cards and the grid. Each team makes BINGO using the Cards as markers, and defends their choices to the remaining teams. Odds are high they'll want to play again!
To practice writing art essays: hand students three random Cards; ask them to choose two and write an essay that assesses similarities and differences between them.
To review in teams: 1. Provide 20 random Cards (painting side up!) to teams of students. Challenge them to create art history timelines. Repeat... and see if previous records can be bested. 2. Label index cards with different periods and "isms" of art history. Allocate the Cards to teams of students, and have them align each painting with its "ism".
To analyze evolution in the style of a famous painter: what influenced Goya, for example, from The Duchess of Alba to The Family of Charles IV to Executions of the Third of May? Ask students to write practice art essays to answer.
To delve into an art movement: pull out the Cards from a particular art movement, and ask questions. What do the paintings have in common? How does this movement differ from the preceding art movement? Or look at a specific artist like Frida Kahlo, who is often lumped with Surrealism in spite of her insistence that she wasn't a Surrealist. What led critics to suggest she was? Try "one of these things doesn't belong here" - throw in some paintings from a different era, and challenge students to isolate those works that don't belong.
Have more ideas? Please share them at info (at)TheMasterpieceCards.com
With thanks to all the art history teachers who submitted ideas, especially S. D. Hasselman, J. Tiongson, M. Graf, A. Fuentes and J. Grenleski.