Christopher Hamner: We're going to look at a couple of monuments today, and I want to approach it from this idea of what is it telling us about the moment and the way that Americans are struggling with their memory of a particular event. Think about the Mall. There will be a thousand people passing through Air and Space between 9am and 9:10 this morning; so in 10 minutes, that's a career's worth of people who may be getting all their history out of just going through those exhibits. The World War II Memorial, which we're going to visit in the afternoon, gets 4.4 million people per year. So in terms of shaping the way people think about events and history, this is really powerful stuff. And I think it's important to think about, well, who made this? And what did they make it for? And what were the circumstances under which this was put up and why does it look the way it looks? For my money, the one that we're going to look at first is the single best, most interesting, most fascinating memorial in the entire city. It's the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. What makes it so interesting is that you can walk past it and only get a tiny, tiny piece of what's going on. You have to really study…you have to spend a little time kind of engaging the monument to kind of get the full experience. And one of the thinks that's so cool [is] that you can talk about it as a piece of history [and] you can also talk about it as a piece of art. And this is one of the neater sculptures, both on this side and on the other side. The sculpture is so well done that if you walk around it, it almost seems to move. You see different things at different spots as you kind of make the semicircle. So maybe we should start there. Just kind of start here—and just like we've been talking about, you know, images, music, all sorts of things that you can read closely—look closely for the detail and try to figure out what's going on here. Teacher 1: He's riding one of the horses. Each one. Teacher 2: There's two riders. Teacher 3: Are they both shot? It looks like this guy's shot over here; he's shot here. This guy's avoiding being shot just like these guys, they're ducking, they're using them as shields. Christopher Hamner: Alright, if you just look at it—if you're just standing here for example and you just take the most cursory look at it what does it look like? If you only spend 40 seconds like most tourists, you take a shot from here and you move on, what do you get out of it? Teacher 4: It's a wagon, going from one place to another. It's moving. Christopher Hamner: It's kind of the heroic—it looks like a standard—you've got the horses rearing back, it's soldiers, it's kind of heroic, there's a guy leaning back, he's got the U.S. artillery flag. It looks like a pretty standard war memorial. When you take a little more time to look at it, what's going on? What is it, first of all? We've got a bunch of guys on horses— Multiple Teachers: It's artillery. Christopher Hamner: It's horse-drawn artillery, it's got an artillery caisson, it appears to be moving up to the front someplace. Everybody got that, right? What's going on? Teacher 5: They're stuck in the mud. Teacher 6: They're under fire. Teacher 7: Yeah, they're in battle. Teacher 5: I got stuck in the mud and cold, suffering. Teacher 8: And this guy looks like he's getting shot. And it looks like they're avoiding being shot. Christopher Hamner: Okay, that's one way to interpret it. One thing, if they were close enough to the front that they were taking fire the battery would probably be disengaged and wheeled in. So it would be rare to get that close. But everybody's kind of gotten the sense that it's in the process of crashing. Right? Let's go around to the other side. What's happening over here? Teacher 9: From this side you can definitely tell that it's more tilted, the part where they're sitting. Christopher Hamner: Okay, so. Teacher 5: The axle is breaking. Christopher Hamner: The axle is snapping; you can see the slack in the tackle there. But notice there's a lot of slack here, they're rearing up, it's in the process of crashing. I mean look at the wheels are akimbo. I think what's happening here is not that these guys are getting shot but, the horses have reared, it's just at this moment—it's full of energy, it's just at this moment where it's about to crash. These guys, I don't know if they're ducking fire of if they're just tired in the back. Especially this guy on the right, I mean, that is just exhaustion in his face. These guys have been towing this thing around for months or years. But they're not even aware that in four tenths of a second the momentum of the artillery case is going to carry them into this huge mess of horseflesh. And these guys are trying to rein in the damage. But, this is a picture of a crash about to happen. Think of how different that is from what you would normally see in a heroic military monument. This isn't a tribute to efficiency, or a tribute to the sheer power of the army, so much as a honest portrayal of how easy it is for things to go wrong. I especially like the guys riding in the back, just the exhaustion there. And think about how atypical that is for a military monument. When do you think this was put up? Teacher 10: After Grant died. Christopher Hamner: Yes! When? So that would cover roughly 130 years. Teacher 10: I was thinking post-World War I. Christopher Hamner: Good! I like that. Post-World War I is a good guess, why? Teacher 10: Because we struggled with modern warfare there and lots of people came home, and Veterans Affairs was formed. Christopher Hamner: That is a great guess, but not correct. That's what's interesting about this. This is pre-First World War by like 20 years, which is really kind of unusual when you think of all the other Civil War statues that we've looked at. We looked at Stonewall Jackson, you know, superhero, Superman, steroids, muscles bulging—that's much more traditional, that's sort of heroic, he looks indestructible, he looks incredibly powerful. This is not indestructible. Teacher: On the right, on the back he's got both of his hands bracing him on the other side like he's getting ready— Christopher Hamner: This is kind of the sense of energy…there's nothing that these guys can do. This is going to go very badly for them in a second or two. And there's a kind of resignation and exhaustion and a realism that is really unusual. You don't normally see a country putting up a military monument that depicts a crash and I think it says something kind of interesting about where the nation was 25 years after the Civil War when they started putting this up. How do we want to remember this event? What are we going to put up? What are we going to show? How are we going to show it? Teacher: Maybe like you were saying, when you really look at war and teach it you should look at the tough side of it and don't glorify it. Like you were saying, it was a struggle, it broke our country apart. Christopher Hamner: I think that's exactly where we're going with this, there's even more interesting stuff on the other side. But think about how unusual that is. And it will become, I think, even clearer as we get to World War II, which does not have this kind of gritty realism to it.

Christopher Hamner: What's the kind of tone of the memorial? Teacher 1: Charge! Teacher 2: The cavalry is making a charge. Christopher Hamner: It's a cavalry charge and it's kind of got those iconic touches: there's the captain in front, he's got his saber up, and they're pointing forward, and there's flags streaming and there's muscles rippling in the horses. It kind of feels like a traditional, heroic celebration. What's going on when you look at it more carefully? Teacher 3: This guy on the side here he's shielding his face. This guy is about to get his day ruined. Christopher Hamner: What's happened to this guy? Teacher 3: His horse is down. Christopher Hamner: His horse has either been hit or has tripped. What is about to happen, what is the story that's going to unfold here? Teacher 4: It's going to be a domino effect. Christopher Hamner: There's a cascade of—the guys in the back are totally unaware of what's happened in front. And the officer leading the charge has got this heroic pose and a heroic look on his face, but is oblivious to the fact that this is, like the other one, kind of in the process of falling apart. What's gonna happen to this guy? Teacher 4: He's going to have his head stepped on. Christopher Hamner: There's a pretty good chance he's gonna be trampled because the horses are going to be unable to stop. That is supposed to represent Shrady, the sculptor, in fact, the face is modeled after his face, which is a kind of odd touch. He didn't live to see the entire thing cast and commissioned. But you've got the same kind of sense that there's energy coming, but if you look closely there is the beginnings of a sort of disaster happening. You have to look for it. If you just step back and say oh, standard cavalry charge, it looks a lot like the heroic monuments you would see at Gettysburg or Antietam; look more carefully and it's kind of brutal realism. Not everybody—the charges didn't always work, the horses fell down. What's going on on the ground in both of them? There's like mud in motion. How many monuments do you recall seeing where there's so much attention to the ground and how nasty—I mean, there's a chopped-down tree trunk on the other side. It recognizes that these Civil War battles didn't happen on a manicured golf course, that they happened in really nasty conditions and there's—it's all in motion too, it's mud that's being kicked up. It's kind of a dirtier, grittier, more realistic version of warfare. This is pre-World War I, and this is really, really different. If you look at most statues of generals, particularly from the Civil War, or a statue of Washington, they're turned out in their general regalia, their officers coats, and their insignia, standing erect and their chests are out—it’s a heroic celebration. This is something different. You get a little bit of that in the front, but it's kind of got this ironic twist in that this glorious charge that he's leading is about to meet with a sort of disastrous end. Teacher 5: I was noticing a few of the other elements that usually you don't see in statues. As you mentioned the mud and the tree back there, but look at the horses' mouths. About three or four of the horses they're exhausted, the tongues are hanging out, especially the one on the far side here. The one on the near side has a wide-open mouth. So they've been charging for a while, this isn't automatically happening, you know, we're not just starting it. Christopher Hamner: That one sort of looks terrified, too. In the horses and on the artillery side there's a sense that they're portraying the fear, which is a real part of the experience, that again you don't normally see. What do you think that the people who put this up, who donated money to it, who designed it, who cast it, who erected it—how do they want you to think about the war? Teacher 6: A more realistic view. Which is kind of before their time. Teacher 7: It's certainly—for me, I'm trying to contextualize it within the end of the Gilded Age and the beginning of imperialism and I'm trying to make sense of it and it doesn't jive with my preconceived notions of what to expect out of a monument during that time. They were in to stuff that was grandiose and heroic; and this is heroic in a very raw way. It's not— Teacherr 5: Raw. Raw, I like that word. Christopher Hamner: If—this should have been erected in 1918 or 1919, right? That would fit in with the narrative of how we understand that people kind of gave up their glorious view of warfare and adapted a more realistic tone. But it doesn't.

Christopher Hamner: Turn around and take a look at U.S. Grant up there. There's some interesting stuff going on with the depiction of Grant, just the way he's portrayed. But there's also the relationship between the two lower pieces, the cavalry on this side and the artillery on the south side and where Grant is located. What do you know about—what is your sort of thumbnail understanding of Grant as a Civil War general. This is after his presidency, which is generally regarded as something of a disappointment. So he's depicted here in his more successful incarnation as a general. You can kind of work backwards from there and one of the reasons that Grant accepted the surrender is that he was the victorious general, he is the general after that incredibly torturous process of trial and error, plugging these guys in and we cover this a little bit in the summer, that there was this revolving parade of generals who had been disastrous—you know, Pope, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, these guys who just could not get it done. And then in the summer of 1863 Grant distinguishes himself at Vicksburg, comes west, and it's Grant who is the head of the armies in the last two years of the war. And who finally grinds down the army of Northern Virginia and forces its surrender. How does he do that? Teacher 1: He picked up on the war of attrition. Christopher Hamner: The thing that Grant did differently that none of the generals previous to him did—So many of those generals were about maneuver and about trying to get behind Lee's army or trying to get between Lee's army and Richmond and trying to win the war without fighting a really bloody battle. Grant was one of the first to embrace a more modern sensibility that said you cannot win a war in this day by capturing the enemy capital, you have to win the war by destroying the enemy army and they only way you can do that is by meeting it on the battlefield and fighting it. Remember the Union had that huge advantage in its, the manpower pool it could draw on, its productive capacity; and the South didn't. The South had a much smaller population and they had much less capacity to produce ammunition and weapons. What had happened in the first two years of the war in a general way is that there that would be a big battle and both armies would kind of pull back. That allowed the South to keep fighting for a long time. Grant is the first commanding officer who really understood that they were going to have to fight them and keep fighting them. Remember when we did the campaigns of 1864; there is just horribly bloody battle after horribly bloody battle from May to July of 1864. They are fighting a massive, deadly engagement every couple of days, this is the Wilderness qne Spotsylvania Courthouse. There were more than 60,000 Union causalities in a six-week period during that point. That’s—they're fighting a major battle every couple of days. Remember, we were talking about the bottom-up experience, what it's like not just to be a soldier, but to be the wife of a soldier, or the mother of a soldier, someone on the home front, and imagine what it's like to get that newspaper every other day and to flip right to the back page, which was called the "Butcher's Bill," and to read over the individual names and be praying that it's not your loved one that's going to be listed there. And that's kind of an interesting contrast to our 20th-century experience. We do a lot of the same things today, but in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts four deaths in a day is a horrible tragedy—and it is—but imagine that there are 400 deaths every day and that it just keeps going on and that there are 4,000 deaths some day. It's a kind of warfare that reaches into Union homes, homes in the North, in a way that was really unprecedented. Grant was extraordinarily unpopular. They began to get a real kind of respect for Grant—who was the total antithesis of a lot of the generals they had had before. McClellan was a little Napoleon, he was always very turned out in polished brass and very much looked the part of a general. You can see that Grant doesn't. A lot of the soldiers saw him as someone that was more relatable. At the same time this is a guy who's continually plunging them into battle. In the spring of 1864 it's not at all clear that that's going to have a successful conclusion.

Christopher Hamner: What's coming across here about him as a general? What is the tone or what adjectives would you use to describe how he's being portrayed. Teacher 1: Alone. Christopher Hamner: Where do you get that? Teacher 1: Well, obviously there's no one else up there with him. You just see the sight of him looking straight, he's in his own thoughts, his own world, he's battling the elements, the wind is blowing past him, the horse's tail is swept; yet he's going to stand fast, like he's determined to have whatever he has in his mind fulfilled. Christopher Hamner: There's like three or four things we can dig into there. First in terms of him being alone, look at how separate he is from the troops that he's leading. He is, what is that, 30 feet? Maybe more? He is physically separated from them; he is also 30 feet above them. He's away from them on this axis and also on the vertical axis. Teacher 2: He could theoretically have been placed in one side or the other in terms of the way that they portray him in his dress. Teacher 3: All of these guys on both sides they don't look like they're wearing like summer—they look bundled up like the weather is bad. I mean, the mud, the rain. Christopher Hamner: And Grant's got that going on too. The adjectives that you guys threw out—resolute. But he's lonely up there. And he's not interacting with the soldiers. Teacher 4: He's in the middle of it all; he's in the weather. You have the same type of weather theme being done, but he's still somehow above it all. Christopher Hamner: Literally above it! Right? He's kind of figuratively above this but he's also literally above it. There's a kind of sense of determination, he's got a fist on his hip. You get this sense of how resolute people wanted to imagine him as. This is a guy who understood that there was not a way to win the war except to do a lot of fighting and an incredible amount of dying, and you can kind of see the weight of that on his shoulders. Teacher 3: He sort of famously internalized a lot of the—I feel like you can see that, his shoulders are kind of hunched forward. Teacher 2: He's not postured the way that you see Stonewall Jackson. Teacher 5: He seems kind of hunched forward. Christopher Hamner: And remember, they had 20 years to think about this. They did not decide to raise the money for the statue on Monday, throw it together on Thursday, and commission it on Friday. There were 20 years of planning and artist models that they work a lot in clay on miniature before they cast something in bronze. There were all sorts of different potential ways to portray Grant. They didn't have to do it the way that they did it. And unlike other kinds of historical texts, where you can say sure you can change that, it's not written in stone—this is written in stone and cast in iron! Teacher 6: One thing that's striking me is that he's also surrounded by four lions. And typically what is a lion known as? The king of the jungle. I think that's speaking out to me right there, too. Christopher Hamner: Well, and then there's something else we haven't talked about, there's the sort of relief that's on the pedestal. Can you guys make out on both sides? Teacher 3: The cavalry again. And then the infantry on this side. Christopher Hamner: The soldiers are present, they're there. And again, that's a little more of a realistic depiction of the soldiers. Teacher 1: Thinking about both sides of the relief, they could have put that relief anywhere. But look where they put it. And what is the relief supporting? Grant. So the underlying message is his men supported him and his decision that he's making on that horse right now. Christopher Hamner: And you notice it's got this kind of realism that I think is really unprecedented, particularly for the time and it's still pretty rare. But, was it Brian pointed out the lions, there's the kind of marble pedestal. It's not the Korean Memorial where you can actually walk around the figures, it still has these nods to more traditional, classical form. But it also incorporates the stuff that's new and I think that makes it just so complicated and so interesting. There's a series of choices here and I think they tell us something about where the nation was at the close of the 19th century and remembering this war and figuring out where it fit into our national narrative.

Suzannah Niepold: This, first off, is much, much bigger than the one we just saw. So what happens when we all look at the whole thing, to start with, is we forget and we miss out on some of the details, especially on the sides. So I'm going to start by asking you to divide in the middle, and have—actually this group is now a little bit bigger, divide in the middle. And have this group look at everything from this man over this way. And you guys look at everything from this woman in blue over this way. Look closely, notice as much detail as you can, you can talk amongst yourselves; try and figure out what's going on in the picture, and keep an open mind for now. We'll put it all together later. Speaker 1: What do you think that is behind him? Is that clouds or… Speaker 2: I think it's mountain? Speaker 3: What did you guys decide this looked like? A river? Speaker 2: Because it's sort of the same color as what's in the foreground. He's gotta stand on something. Speaker 1: He's right, you're right. And then the river—and maybe that's muddy. Yeah, I saw that. Speaker 3: And that looks like Little Boy Blue! Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that. Speaker 4: I'm not really sure what that is. What the woman—maybe Freedom? Speaker 1: Yeah, she's carrying like a wreath—that's what they used to wear. Speaker 3: And there's a steamboat— Speaker 4: Red is always a prominent color, and it's clearly in the center, so that must mean something. Speaker 1: Well, it's like blue and red. Speaker 5: It's like the muddy Mississippi? I don’t know. There's a steamboat. Speaker 4: I was thinking gold instead of muddy, but it could be muddy. Speaker 1: But it looks like it's harvest time. So all the work has been done, the food— Speaker 2: American bounty, the corn, the prosperous land. Speaker 1: And everything—at least these three subjects seem to be very relaxed. Speaker 2: Yep, not doing any work. Speaker 1: He's working, but it's okay, he's not being overworked. So there's a sense of safety, a sense of security. Suzannah Niepold: So, let's start with this group here, what's going on in this half of the artwork? Speaker 1: We were looking at—we started first on sort of the food. That it's harvest time, and then the people sitting on top of the cornucopia of food as maybe the food is the support system that allows them to feel secure and safe from want. And then we were looking at, in the background, at what we assume is water, but it's not blue—so is that golden? Or is it muddy to reflect the Mississippi because of the steamboat? And then we were looking at the mountain-slash-and/or clouds in the background and trying to decide what that was as well. Speaker 2: And didn't know if that was "Little Boy Blue." And the date is '47. Suzannah Niepold: And you saw that because the artist so inconveniently put that in the corner? Darn it! You noticed what's really prominent in this half of the picture is that harvest, the bounty, and it's all spilling out of the cornucopia. I like the way that you say that's maybe the support that makes them feel secure, and you used the phrase "freedom from want." Now what era is that from, too? Speaker 3: Roosevelt. Suzannah Niepold: Roosevelt, that's right, end of World War II. So that really fits right into this. And then you wondered also about this weird color, it's water because there's a steamboat on it, but maybe it's a golden color or a muddy churning color that made you think Mississippi, Old Muddy, that kind of thing. So you've situated it a little bit in place and time. How about this half of the artwork? Speaker 4: I grew up on a farm in northern California, so this really reminds me of home with the foothills, the coloring of the countryside, the live oaks along the ridgeline, and the mountains in the background. So that really reminded me of home and harvest time. Suzannah Niepold: So more harvest, American farm, American Dream. What else? Speaker 5: It looks like there's a struggle of some sort with the bull. It was at one point tied up, you can see the lasso around its horns but it's cut somehow. Suzannah Niepold: We talked about the farm; notice there's this struggle here between this man and the bull, he's gotten loose. What else is going on over here that we haven't talked about yet? Speaker 6: The African American gentleman on the fence there. Suzannah Niepold: So he's sitting on the fence, what might his role in this scene be? Speaker 7: I think the symbolism of him being "on the fence," it can go either way—he can help in this struggle, or he can—I don't know. Suzannah Niepold: Maybe, purposefully, he's literally on the fence as you noticed. Speaker 4: It looks like he was very content to watch, but now that the bull's broken free he's getting involved and coming in to help.

Suzannah Niepold: Putting the artwork together, how do you think the two halves fit?

Speaker 1: It's like a new Manifest Destiny, too. You've got Liberty right there on the cornucopia, and this seems more the wildness of the West. Like the Manifest Destiny picture that we've all seen before, you kind of move from progress to more wild.

Speaker 2: Almost two Americas, where on the one hand we have this security, we've won World War II, life is great; but then the bull being loose and still offering a threat is sort of there's still challenges out there that we need to face.

Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so there's still that struggle of two forces there in the middle.

Speaker 3: The right side seems very calm and serene, the boy is sitting very relaxed, and his eyes are almost closed. And the two women looking very peaceful, and she's almost falling asleep. On the left it's chaos, there's this raging bull.

Speaker 4: And the bull, doesn't it represent economy? Don't we have [on] Wall Street the big brass or whatever bull down there? And then there's this man on a horse waving in the background, and I'm not quite sure—he seems happy, but he seems to be saying goodbye; he doesn't seem to be coming, he seems to be leaving or passing by. So I don't know if the country's struggling with—cause after World War II, we're coming out of the Great Depression, and what does this new economy, the GI Bill being in place, I don't know if any of that—but yet, maybe we're moving from one base economy to another?

Speaker 5: The other thing with 1947—because African Americans were allowed to fight in World War II, but then they came back and they weren't given their rights; somebody said he's kind of like on the fence, and is he on on the fence because he's like, "Am I free? Do I have rights?"

Suzannah Niepold: Right, so pre-Civil Rights era. One thing that's interesting if you look to the bull, and maybe that's a symbol and maybe that means something else. One symbol we've seen him used for is the economy and the global market. Is there anything else that stands out that as though it might not belong on a farm in America in 1947 or doesn't look quite like it comes from that era?

Speaker 6: Maybe the cornucopia?

Suzannah Niepold: Yeah, I don't think you'd expect to—you probably, growing up on a farm, wouldn't have a giant cornucopia in your backyard?

Speaker 7: No, but it is a symbol that stands for something else.

Suzannah Niepold: Ah, so again a symbol that might be standing in for something else. Anything else that doesn't seem middle—middle America farm?

Speaker 8: Well things aren't all going to be on the same farm. It's agriculture from across the country. You're not going to grow grapes in the same place that you grow wheat in the same place that you grow pumpkins and—

Speaker 9: The other group pointed out the two women. They're not exactly wearing farm clothes. And the big cape—I'm not sure what's in her right hand.

Suzannah Niepold: So one woman almost compared to the Statue of Liberty, so maybe they're more symbolic than realistic as well. Now, we've covered up the label, but looking at a bit of information gives us some clues. Not only was it painted in 1947, it was painted by Thomas Hart Benton, who's a Missouri artist. But he called it Achelous and Hercules. If we look back at our Greek mythology, we see there's a myth of the fight between Hercules—who might be a familiar name, usually students have heard about him; he's the son of Zeus, he's half god, strong man. The myth is that he is fighting over a girl, he wants to marry Deianira, and he has to fight for her hand in combat with Achelous—who is a river god. He takes on many forms depending on the type of river; so if he is a winding river he's a snake, and if he's a charging river he is a bull. So here we have a symbol, maybe not of economy but of the river. And it's a battle between the river and between man. So knowing that, what do you think the artist may be trying to say? Why is the struggle between man and the river important in this setting?

Speaker 5: Irrigation projects?

Speaker 10: Flooding.

Suzannah Niepold: Flooding, irrigation.

Speaker 1: Transport of crops.

Suzannah Niepold: Right, transport. So all of this—if you notice this harvest, we need to harness nature to create that. But sometimes it fights back, right, someone mentioned flooding. Benton was living in Missouri on the Missouri River during some very severe floods. So when he was commissioned to paint this for a department store in Kansas City, he chose a scene that he thought the people in that area would respond to of man conquering the bull. Because what happens is Hercules rips off the bull's horn and that's what turns into the cornucopia, so that's how California got its symbol.

The label I didn't want you to read makes a connection to the Marshall Plan. The idea that Europe was starving after the war and America was very proud of its bounty and its ability to feed the world. So that's one connection you can make. I didn't want you to read it ahead of time because I didn't want that to be the only connection that you make.

Suzannah Niepold: Alright, gather up where you can see this painting. I'm covering up the label on purpose; I want you to look before we get any sort of background information. What's the whole picture about? Teacher 1: I begin by looking for what's underneath the rainbow. Suzannah Niepold: Okay. What is underneath the rainbow? Teachers: A home. A church; it looks like a church. Suzannah Niepold: So you notice this tiny little house, sometimes that takes a while to see. And that's at the foot of the rainbow; so what's that about? Why did the artist do that? Teacher 2: Well, homestead. Out west that was the big American dream—have your own land, have your own house, and not be subject to anybody's control. Suzannah Niepold: Fantastic. So that's the American dream—to have your own spot surrounded by land. Okay. What else do you notice? We've used the words beauty, paradise, how else would you describe this particular landscape? Teachers: Vast, open. Teacher 3: You've got two little [unintelligible] over here. I mean, it's not totally alone but it's pretty [unintelligible]. Suzannah Niepold: You're not totally alone, but you don't have right next-door neighbors to deal with. The house is really small; it is really hard to see. What does the artist do to make sure your eye goes there eventually? How does he point it out? Teachers: The rainbow. Suzannah Niepold: Right, it's right at the end of the rainbow. But that really wasn't enough for him. How else does your eye go there? Teacher 4: You've got that slope coming from here too that angles up. Suzannah Niepold: You have what coming up? Teacher 4: The slope, the road. It comes up right here and you've got a lot of water right here. Suzannah Niepold: Absolutely. [unintelligible mummers and answers from visitors] Suzannah Niepold: Fantastic, you have all of these lines—this little sort of drop of light leading up here, the water, the path, the pointing. So that really let's you know that this is the main subject of the story. It's kind of the American dream. The title is Landscape with Rainbow, it was painted in 1859, and the artist is Robert Duncanson, Robert Scott Duncanson. So, if this is painted in 1859, why would you choose this subject at about that time in American history? Lets consider, first of all, what's going on. . . . Teacher 5: People are beginning to go West, also. Teacher 6: The American dream, with all the politics going on, is in some ways disappearing. Suzannah Niepold: The American dream, this idea has come up several times, so that's really maybe challenged, is that what you're saying? Teacher 6: I'm saying with the conflict, the regional conflict, some of the ideals of America are in question. Suzannah Niepold:: The other thing to add that isn't on this label—but it is available on our website in the biography of the artist—is that this artist is African American. Does that change the painting for you at all? Okay, I'm hearing "Oh, oh, interesting." Teacher 3: Going north to the promised land. Suzannah Niepold:: So it's not just the American dream, it's the promised land? Teacher 1: Yeah, but then why would he put two white people there? Teacher 3: Dominant cultures. Teacher 2: Because he's hiding behind his work. His work's not going to be respected. He's an African American. So he paints white people on it because a white man's going to look at a painting with white people in it, they're not going to look at a painting if there's a black one in it. Suzannah Niepold: It's going to change the meaning. If you’re thinking of contemporary viewers, you're right; it's going to change the meaning. Duncanson was funded by abolitionists, and their goal was to show how ridiculous this idea [was] that a race was lesser by showing how skilled an African American artist could be. So he's showing off technical skill, as well as maybe this dream—this kind of American dream on the eve of the Civil War. There are kind of three eras of African American art. Everything before the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s is kind of what you see here of trying to say, "We're just as good; this is ridiculous, we can do everything that you can do." It's not until the Harlem Renaissance that it's saying, "We don't have to show your world, we can show our own."

Teacher 1: Wouldn't you like to just be standing right there on the water? Teacher 2: Okay, that's the whole point. That's what you're supposed to do. That's what he was doing. He's been on traveling shows to encourage people go to out West. Teacher 1: Oh! Teacher 2: So you got it. Suzannah Niepold: In fact the way the curators hung this, with this curtain here is meant to kind of hint at that history. And that Bierstadt painted these giant landscapes and that he would tour with them, and he would keep them behind a curtain and you would pay admission. Then he would whip back the curtain. But how does Bierstadt accomplish what we just talked about? How does he make you want to step into this landscape and just say, "Wow!" Teacher 2: Its size. Teacher 3: It's a huge picture. It's not just a picture [where] you're like, "Hey, I wonder what that is?" Teachers: It's like a window; it looks peaceful. Suzannah Niepold: Peaceful. How does he create this idea of peacefulness? Teachers: The deer; the calm water; calm waterfalls; the light; the soft clouds; the softness of the whole picture. Teacher 3: It's almost alluding kind of like Heaven and angels right where all the top comes out and the clouds are. You kind of think you would see this in a church or whatever, and a church is supposed to be one of the most peaceful places. Teacher 1: And everything goes up. All the trees go up, the mountains go up, everything is pointing up. Suzannah Niepold: Things that you notice and the specific details that you're pointing out. Like how still the water is and how the deer—they're not spooked, there's nothing coming up behind them. And we have this . . . some people call it the "Godly light" kind of peeking through. What role does God play in this period of American history? Why might he have a part of this landscape, or why might he. . . . Teacher 1: Manifest destiny. God wants us to go there. Suzannah Niepold: Manifest destiny. God wants us to go there. Teacher 2: When was this painted? Suzannah Niepold: Look at the label over here. Teachers: 1868. Suzannah Niepold: 1868. Yes, it's called Among the Sierra Nevada. So it's California in 1868. So, again, why might he paint this in 1868? Teacher 3: It's after the Civil War. It's a calming . . . well, it's supposed to be calming because what's really going on between the South and the North during Reconstruction still is not very calm. And this is an escape. It's an escape for everyone. Teacher 4: But it's also the year that the Transcontinental Railroad is finished. Suzannah Niepold: But it's funny that you don't see any of that, right? You don't see the modernity, the advancement of civilization has no place here; it's still this ideal. And I think it's going to what you're saying is that the Civil War ripped up the East Coast. If you search our website for Civil War photographs, we have plenty, you'll see just destroyed landscapes. You just walked down that hallway past Niagara and all these sort of "New Eden"-y paintings. We sort of saw ourselves as the new world, new opportunity, and the Civil War maybe destroyed that image a little bit. And so the East Coast loses its "shininess" and we start looking out here for our peace and our majesty and our hope. Teacher 1: May I? Suzannah Niepold: Go ahead. Teacher 1: It's like a staircase almost, with the sides. It goes up there, and it goes on, and it takes you into. . . . Suzannah Niepold: To make sure your eye goes all the way back there.

Suzannah Niepold: Okay, let's start with this one just by looking at the right-hand side; just block out—just pretend the other half isn't there. Okay, so, it's nice and peaceful, how else would you describe it? Teacher 1: Old-school. You see the boats with the sails and the hand fishing in the rowboat. It's kind of the way they've always done it. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so the way it's always been done. And what is being done? What's going on on these boats? Teacher 2: In the front one they’re fishing. Suzannah Niepold: And how are they powered? Teacher 3: It's manual. Suzannah Niepold: Still on the right side. So [by] oar. It's manpower. Teachers: Sailing; wind; natural. Suzannah Niepold: Alright, switching to the left-hand side, what do you see over there? Teacher 4: Pollution. Suzannah Niepold: Yeah, it's funny when we look at it with our eyes you see smog, pollution, this horrible environmental travesty. How might they have seen it in 1866? Teachers: Progress; power of progress. Suzannah Niepold: So you have to consider the transition in how our modern eyes see things versus how they might have been perceived back then. Different kinds of power—maybe steam power, progress, industry. Look at the landscape on both sides, how is it different? Teacher 5: This over here [on the right] is clear, you can see… Teacher 6: It's greener. Suzannah Niepold: So which do you think the artist liked better, the "old school" or the "new school." Which did he support in this painting and how can you tell? I don't know the answer to this. It's a matter of. . . . Teacher 1: To me it looks like old school because he paints that front rowboat so very, very clear; sitting from back here you can see just about every detail of the gentlemen. Teacher 7: But the industry is made larger. It's much larger; more powerful. And it's closer to you. So he wants you to look at this. Suzannah Niepold: We talked some about light and dark, and how artists can use that. Which side has the sunlight? Teacher 5: They both do. You're focusing here, and then you're focusing there. It's almost like you're doing this— Teacher 7: When you look at the sky, this one is lighter [right side]; but when you look down, this one is lighter [left side]. Teacher 5: Yeah, on the water. He's presenting both sides of the issue. [Indecipherable, multiple teachers talk at once] Teacher 1: It's like you said, most of the sunlight is on this side [left side], but look at the smoke coming from it. It's changing it, it's turning it dark. Suzannah Niepold: I want to come back to what you were saying though; because look there is sort of this blue sky up here, and here it's the man-made smoke that's covering that up. But here [right side], we have the natural storm. So again, he's almost setting up that equivalent. Teacher 8: Well, you just said the word storm. Is the storm bringing in this change?

Suzannah Niepold: You came from Gettysburg—am I right about that? Teachers: Yes ma'am; yeah. Suzannah Niepold: So the Civil War is fresh in your mind, right? This is a tiny little scene of Appomattox—feel free to come closer, maybe, you know, take a look, and then let someone else come in. It is a challenge sometimes to work with these much smaller paintings. This is the scene of the surrender; Grant and Lee are meeting in order to officially end the war. Although of course, it wouldn't exactly end right at this moment. How has the artist chosen to present the scene? If you're all the way over here, feel free to come in and fill in the front. Teacher 1: You can tell who won. Suzannah Niepold: You can tell who won. That's very interesting. How can you tell who won? Teacher 1: Well, because the Union soldier is in the front, and he's got his hand on the desk and his whole chest is facing out towards the audience. It's almost like a teacher stance with somebody, if you're scolding a child. You're looking at them like, "I can't believe you just did this." That's what he's doing. Because Lee was such a highly regarded officer in the military at the time, it's almost like he's looking at him like "Why did you do this to yourself, and to us?" Kind of like he's being scolded. Suzannah Niepold: What about Lee though? It's not exactly like he's cowering in a corner. How does the artist show him? How did he show this highly respected, regarded man in this tough moment? Teacher 2: I think he's got his hands up like, "I can't believe I had to do this, that it came to this." Suzannah Niepold: So it's very hard for him to do this. What else do you notice about the scene? Teacher 3: You've got light right on the midline. So that . . . I don't know if that means like, the light, the focus is in the middle where they're agreeing, maybe, to quit fighting. Suzannah Niepold: That is, maybe, the highlight of the moment where the two sides are coming together. And let's use that to talk about composition. It is two sides, right? With the uniforms. How are those two sides equal? Are they? Teacher 4: We've got three soldiers on one end and two soldiers on the other end. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so there's a little bit more weight over here. Even if you just look at the height of the two generals, [it's] roughly equal the way they're presented. You're right that Grant is slightly forward in that sort of authority stance. But if you look into surrender orders, the fact that Lee was allowed to keep his sword is a huge step. What does this say about what the North was hoping for the end of the war? The way that this scene is presented in terms of a surrender. How did they want to treat the South now that everything was over? Teacher 1: In this moment, it looks like they want to . . . it's like brothers fighting, [it's] done, over, let's go back to the way things were, let's forget about it. And of course we're history teachers, and we know that doesn't actually happen. Teacher 4: Yeah, but when you look at this guy's— Teacher 3: He's not real happy. Teacher 4: [He's like,] "Hey, you know, I really don't care about this." Teacher 3: Grant wasn't wearing his general bars. Suzannah Niepold: A few things are historically accurate. We know that he had mud on his pants, he had rushed there on his horse. Teacher 3: He had borrowed a jacket, so he wasn't wearing his general's jacket. Suzannah Niepold: But he wasn't wearing his general's jacket. So anytime you see an inaccuracy—or you see something you know is actually wrong from the way it happened. For me, that's actually the most valuable part of an artwork because that's pointing out a decision that the artist made in order to help tell a story. Teacher 3: Washington Crossing the Delaware. Suzannah Niepold: Exactly! So actually if we read the accounts of this scene, and there are many of them, there were a ton of people in this room. So why might the artist have chosen just to show a few? Teacher 3: Make it more intimate. Suzannah Niepold: How does that help tell the story. Teacher 1: He had to illustrate the significance of the famous Lee having to surrender, which ultimately became the turning point in the war. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so it highlights him more if there are fewer people in the room, okay.

Mary Hendrickse: We're going to start off with a really simple activity—the Coke bottle—and finding out how much information we can get about Coca-Cola from this Coke bottle.

Speaker 1: I notice that the shape is made to feel good as you're holding it.

Kendra Huffbower: I notice that it's made out of glass, so it could be recycled…

Kendra Huffbower: The Coke bottle we were thinking about incorporating into our daily morning meeting routine. Where that's kind of the activity and you pass an object and you really have to think about what they're noticing and why they're noticing that and how it's used and the function and design of it.

Speaker 2: There's another image on here. There's an image of a Coke bottle printed on the Coke bottle. Maybe that's something to do with scanning or something?

Speaker 3: Yeah, going on the shape of it, it's kind of…seeing that it comes out of the 1950s-ish time, it's kind of got an hourglass shape of a slender woman's body.

Speaker 4: That was mine! No!

Speaker 3: But that's good, great minds think alike! It reminds me of Barbie or something.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, okay, so the hourglass figure type of idea.

Speaker 3: Whether that was implicit or not.

Mary Hendrickse: Why do you think—let's just go with that.

Speaker 4: Can I tell why, 'cause that was my thing?

Speaker 3: This was a joint thing between minds.

Mary Hendrickse: Why do you think they might have used that shape, that hourglass shape?

Speaker 4: I think it's advertising, because if I drink it I'm gonna look like Barbie.

Speaker 5: It has a date on it—11 February 12. I'm assuming it's either expiration date or…

Mary Hendrickse: If that is the expiration date, what do we think about that? That it expires next year, like eight months from now.

Speaker 6: Lots of preservatives.

Mary Hendrickse: Lots of preservatives, okay.

Speaker 2: That it has an expiration date, though, at all. That's better than if it doesn't!

Rachel Blessing: We talked a lot about visual literacy today and trying to incorporate that in a meaningful way in the classroom is my hope. I've been writing down how she's [Mary Hendrickse] been teaching us, because that's something that she's modeling for us. I don't know if she knows that, but she is.

Rachel Blessing: It's from Mexico.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, it was made in Mexico. So what does that tell us?

Kendra Doyle: I think sometimes we can just get so caught up in day-to-day things that we don't take the time to look at the outside of a building and just see what does this tell us, what does this mean? Taking the time to just slow down and observe and analyze, that’s something that I've learned.

Kendra Doyle: I noticed the label, it's red, and the way the Coca-Cola is written it looks like a ribbon almost, the script. It's like a repeating sound, it's like a catchy sound—Coca-Cola—it's like the same letters.

Mary Hendrickse: So, I wanted to point out that it took us one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 people to get to the logo that's written on it. Because that's something that we expect to see, so we don’t really think about it very often.

I have some disks that I'll give you at the end of the day in an electronic form so you can use it again if you want to and it's got the reason behind some of the design parts. They did go for the curvy bottle on purpose, for both easy gripping and attractiveness—because it looked like a woman—and the red and white because it was bold colors. So there's a reason behind even the smallest details of a Coke bottle, and the same thing goes with buildings. Even the smallest detail in a building has importance and has meaning.

Mary Hendrickse: Visual literacy is really about slowing your students down and asking them to articulate why they are making the assumptions they are. What did they see that makes them say that? We're very quick to say, "Oh, that's a school." Well, why does it look like a school? What about it makes it look like a school? It's about looking closer and longer and further. Drawing is one way that you can do that. It's also important to ask questions that bring you to more questions and more ideas. And it's also important to get your kids to ask questions too.

There's a handout over there called "50 Ways to Look at a Big Mac Box." These are good questions to use about anything. You can use them about a Coke bottle, you can use them about a building, you can use this as a reference. I'm going to give each group two pictures of buildings you may not be familiar with. You can either work on them together, you can pick one to work on as a group, or you can split up into two smaller groups. I would like you to use those questions and look really closely at the details to see if you can figure out more information about this building. Okay? Does that make sense to everybody?

[Group 1:]
Speaker 1: That's the entrance.

Speaker 2: And are these windows?

Speaker 1: Ah, could be, letting in some light.

Speaker 2: Or ventilation.

Speaker 3: So describe the shape—

Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say planetarium or an arena.

Speaker 4: I was thinking like a rec center.

Speaker 1: Yeah, a sports center.

[Group 2:]
Speaker 1: We said that we noticed the landscape in this one. We noticed the intentional barriers. The park area is set up to where you can enjoy the view of the building and set up to where you might want to just go and take a walk.

Speaker 2: There's shade because there's trees; if it's sunny you can do a picnic underneath them.

Speaker 3: And I think that's juxtaposed with the symmetrical almost like prism, to me, structure.

Speaker 1: The straight lines.

Speaker 3: It's straight, the windows are tiny and narrow and dark.

[Large-group discussion:]
Mary Hendrickse: We're going to go around and I'd like each group to tell a little bit about what they think about these buildings. What did you…what do you think about this one?

Speaker 1: The design is different. When you look inside of it, it looks kind of like the chandelier crystal things hanging down. The top looks very translucent. We were kind of thinking if it's like a memorial type thing.

Speaker 2: There's a variety of materials because the bottom level is like these pillars but glass in the front and in the back, and then there's this marble layer. We can't really tell what exactly the material is at the top, but it's like this mesh, it looks like a metal sort of mesh glittery something.

Speaker 3: And when you look up through the center of the building, you can see it glows a little bit, almost like it's open. So there's offices or some functioning room up top.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, yeah, absolutely. So this is one proposed design for the National Museum of African American Culture and Heritage. You guys were absolutely on target when you were thinking about what the different parts mean. The design was supposed to look like a crown—this idea of a crown—it was supposed to look like it glows. I mean, you guys were able to get a lot of information out of this just by looking at it.

[Group 3:]
Speaker 1: See what the people are wearing.

Speaker 2: See what the people are wearing or doing.
[This seems odd…should this group discussion be here?]

Mary Hendrickse: This building was built a long time ago to be both a Pension Bureau for Civil War soldiers so they could come in and pick up their retirement checks or pensions, and also a space to have inaugural balls. As we're going through we're going to be drawing things and looking at different aspects of the building and seeing how they can reveal different information about how this building was used.

Rachel Blessing: I can't tell you the last time I've drawn a picture, so just being forced to do those things and remembering what it's like for the kids, and also just learning new things. I grew up in DC, and I've been to this building but I didn't know half of what I learned today.

Speaker 1: Look, there's a clue. There's a Civil War clue right there. There's people coming to get their pensions.

Mary Hendrickse: The first thing that I want you to do is to open up your sketchbooks. We are going to do a 30-second quick sketch. I want you to get a sort of big picture, overall impressions of what you see in this space, okay? What were you able to capture in 30 seconds?

Multiple Speakers: Nothing. Columns. Arches.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, so columns, arches. So maybe something that the architect really wanted you to look at and focus on when you came into the building. What about those arches and columns? What do you notice about them?

Speaker 2: They look like aqueducts.

Mary Hendrickse: They look like aqueducts, okay. Aqueducts from today or from—

Speaker 3: No, like Rome.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, so like the Roman aqueducts.

Kendra Doyle: Ancient Greece and Rome—what connection does it have to that? What message are they trying to send? So I think being here sometimes reinforces some of those ideas about those things we've discussed in class.

Mary Hendrickse: What is this?

Multiple Speakers: It's the seal.

Mary Hendrickse: It's the seal. The seal of what?

Multiple Speakers: The United States of America.

Kendra Doyle: We might be able to actually do a field study to a site. If not, we also discussed just starting by analyzing the buildings that we're in. So many DC schools have this history and if we just take the time to look at what's around us, the buildings themselves tell an important story.

Mary Hendrickse: Doesn't have to be perfect, you're just recording clues. Your own interpretation of what you see.

Judy Leek Bowers: Drawing, I thought that was neat, because then you really do get to see what different people think is important. None of our drawings were the same.

Mary Hendrickse: We're going to do a really quick share; this is the easiest way to share. Everybody hold up your sketchpads like this. There you go. Take notice of what other people have drawn. Did they draw things that are similar to you? Different?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I did. I don't see what other people see.

Judy Leek Bowers: There's always a new technique. There's always somebody that you meet that has a different perspective. In just this short length of time it's opened my eyes to other ways to address the children. Really having more instruction that's almost individualized to each child so that they can think more deeply about the place and the power it might have.

Mary Hendrickse: What were some of the things that people drew?

Multiple Speakers: The doorway.

Speaker 1: The columns.

Mary Hendrickse: What can the door tell you about how the building was used? Is it like a normal door you would see on a house? How else is it different from a normal door?

Speaker 2: It's huge, it's inviting. The window above it at the same time—it's not a stained glass window, but still you [can] see an old castle or church.

Mary Hendrickse: It's a little bit elaborate; it's not really a plain door.

Speaker 3: What about the sculpture around the door? It's so different from that.

Mary Hendrickse: The sculptures around the door. Anybody want to guess who those people might be?

Speaker 4: You've got different ones. You have the Navy kind of on this side and then you have the Army maybe on this side.

Mary Hendrickse: We know it's from the Pension Bureau, so these were some of the people who were going to be coming into the building. So they had a visual clue on the outside of the building about what this building was used for.

Mary Hendrickse: Let's start off with the Capitol Building. Who was looking at the Capitol Building?

Speaker 1: The fact that there's the two houses—Senate and the House of Representatives—kind of link this idea of states and the nation, and then the dome in the middle kind of unifies the two. There's the Greek-style columns, which pay tribute to the birthplace of democracy.

Speaker 2: Everything else paled in comparison; the marble, the white symbolized purity.

Mary Hendrickse: Ideal, pristine, we're doing good things here. Perched upon the hill to add to the importance.

Speaker 1: Stately, powerful in itself; but not overdone, not overblown, not too elaborate.

Mary Hendrickse: A house for the president rather than a mansion for the president, or a castle for the president. So not towards the realm of king and royalty, but still important enough that a president can live in there.

Speaker 2: It's got kind of a plantation house feel to it, too.

Mary Hendrickse: Anything else that anybody wanted to add? We still have that continuation of the white coloring again and that reference to classical architecture with the columns and the capitals.

Mary Hendrickse: Who looked at the Jefferson Memorial?

Speaker 1: We talked about the columns and the architecture, the structure of the building being reminiscent of ancient Roman architecture and how Rome was the greatest power of its time so it's our expression of being one of the greatest powers in the world.

Speaker 2: We also talked about him standing as opposed to Lincoln, who is sitting.

Mary Hendrickse: What did you think about him standing?

Speaker 3: He was sort of presiding over everything and the idea that when you go to the monument you have to walk up the steps to greet him and you have to look up at Jefferson; and he's just sort of looking down—not looking down on us, but—

Mary Hendrickse: Surveying the land?

Speaker 3: Right. But just sort of overseeing, making sure the democracy stays intact.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, the Lincoln Memorial. Who was looking at that one?

Speaker 1: We talked about the Parthenon and the Greek influence.

Mary Hendrickse: Anything else? What about the size of Lincoln? He's huge! So what does that say?

Speaker 3: He's a huge figure in American history

Speaker 4: He has a huge position in our history.

Mary Hendrickse: Okay, so his position in our history, he's this huge man, huge figure in our history. The original statue was going to be a lot smaller and then when they went to start trying to figure out putting it in the building they realized it was going to be much too small and it would be dwarfed by the architecture, so they made it even bigger.

Speaker 5: I always think it's so ironic to think that they ended up making this huge statue of him and making him this huge icon, whereas what we know of him and his personality is so humble and, you know, just your everyday man. I just only imagine what he would think if he could see this.

Mary Hendrickse: It's got symbols on it about Lincoln, but the building itself has become a bigger symbol for civil rights and for rights in general. It's grown beyond what Lincoln was about to be even more symbolic and meaningful to the country.

Speaker 6:: So don't meanings always evolve? The meanings of the power of a place always is changing.

Mary Hendrickse: Absolutely, these things grow, you're absolutely right. They grow and they evolve until what we think now about the Lincoln Memorial is not the same thing they would have thought about the Lincoln Memorial in the 1920s.

Judy Leek Bowers: I'm understanding that everything that's historical is not written. Some things are based on the boulder that's in the middle of the road and it has a story behind it. Why is it significant in the District of Columbia, and why is it significant to you? And that's where I need to learn to make the connection for the students. Who really decides if the place has power?

Briana Zavadil White: So, within the education department what we do is we use the portrait as a springboard into a conversation about history and biography, because the Portrait Gallery considers itself to be a biography, history, and art museum. So the art, the portrait, is always our focus, yet we're using that to get into a much deeper conversation.

The activity that we like to do is called a puzzle activity. You will need to share, and some of you will get your own. All right, this is what I would like you to do. In your pairs, or individually—depending on if you have a pair or you're working individually—just look at your puzzle piece, and try to identify what it is that you see. You're not trying to put the puzzle together yet, because we will get to that point; don't share with another group what it is that you have, just identify what it is that you're looking at. Okay? And then we'll go through in just a second.

[One group converses]

Speaker 1: [Unintelligible]

Speaker 2: It makes him seem really easy and relaxed.

Speaker 1: And interested in what he's saying. The other person over there, it's like he's not party to that conversation.

Speaker 2: Right, like he's focused on something else over here.

Speaker 1: Doesn't that look like he's looking at—maybe the city—

Briana Zavadil White: Just identify to the group what it is that you saw, but not showing anybody else your puzzle piece. Okay? Okay?

Speaker 1: Levers, wheels, some type of transportation tool? Lots of wood, and lots of levels—platforms—made of wood.

Speaker 2: We had a rug, a couple shoes—with feet and pant legs. And a map, or sketch of a building unrolled on the floor.

Speaker 3: I had what looks to be a blueprint sitting on an end table with a red rug on the floor.

Speaker 4: We have a meeting; there are many men involved. Two men are having an aside—one is turned to the other listening. There's something strange on the table, a metallic device, it looks like it's got tape through it; so we were wondering if it’s a telegraph receiver or something.

Briana Zavadil White: What do we know for certain about this portrait?

Speaker 5: That it's a formal affair.

Speaker 6: The signing of the Declaration of Independence or something?

Speaker 7: There's no women.

Briana Zavadil White: So it's a meeting, there's no women, it’s a formal affair, the signing of perhaps the Declaration.

Speaker 8: They look like prominent, powerful men; they have authoritative dress.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so their clothing is telling us that—again, this idea of formality—but also that they are prominent gentlemen.

Speaker 9: Movers and shakers.

Briana Zavadil White: We talked about the rug, there's some red drapery, right? And the marble pillars.

Speaker 10: There's the Franklin portrait.

Briana Zavadil White: There's the Franklin portrait.

Speaker 10: Which would mean that it's not the Declaration of Independence signing, but maybe it's inventors or industrialists.

Speaker 11: Maybe the period of Enlightenment, invention, science.

Briana Zavadil White: And you had said mid-19th century. Why did you say that?

Speaker 12: The clothing.

Speaker 13: No powdered wigs.

Speaker 12: The dark black coats that seemed to have been popular around that time.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, okay. What do you want to do with it?

Speaker 13: Put it together?

Briana Zavadil White: Why don't we do it right there, in that open space?

[Attendees assemble puzzle]

Briana Zavadil White: What's the big "so what?" of a puzzle activity?

Speaker 14: If you did it with a class, they'd be questioning where things go, where things are placed, what's the significance of observing.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so observation [and] visual thinking. What else?

Speaker 15: Spatial awareness of where something's located within something larger.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, and making inferences. Anything else?

Speaker 16: Working collaboratively.

Briana Zavadil White: The puzzle activity works really well when you choose a portrait that has a lot going on in it, like this piece does. It allows the opportunity to get into the individual pieces, because no one piece doesn't have a lot going on. Even the piece in the corner that sort of looks like a lot of just dark space, I mean, it's still an important piece of the puzzle.

Briana Zavadil White: What do all of these men have in common? Speaker 1: They've got to be inventors. Speaker 2: They're trying to make a decision. Briana Zavadil White: They have to be inventors, they're trying to make a decision. What visually in this portrait is leading you to believe "inventors" and, again, this idea of a meeting and trying to make a decision about something? Speaker 3: Blueprints, models. Speaker 4: Different things, like the gun could be a Colt; just all the different little contraptions, definitely the blueprints, and Franklin again, I think that's— Speaker 5: He's symbolic. Speaker 6: You've got the gentleman pointing at whatever it is, and it looks like the three of them together in the center are pointing at it. They may agree on something and the guy turning across the table to talk to the gentleman behind him…maybe there's two different ideas about what's going on. Speaker 7: I'm wondering though about the men on the left. The lighting is on them so they're significant somehow, but they seem on the fringe of what's going on. So I'm wondering why are they there and what impact do they have? Speaker 8: Or are they just the investors. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, okay. So this is interesting right? You're thinking that perhaps some of these individuals are investors. So again I guess the question would be, what do they allhave in common? Speaker 9: They don't look happy. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Speaker 10: Well, they're all white males. Briana Zavadil White: What does that tell us? Speaker 10: They are leaders of some industry, because white, and they probably are property owners because they're making a decision and at this timeframe you had to own property to have any kind of power or authority. Briana Zavadil White: What does it say that Ben Franklin is in this portrait, but as a portrait within the portrait? Not physically among them. Speaker 11: It's past his time, but he's influenced the thinking or whatever is going on. Speaker 12: He's pretty much the "Great Inventor." He represents the spirit of inventing. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so, it's past his time—which is starting to help us date this portrait a little bit; we know we're past 1795. He is above them, again as the Father of Science and Invention—the patron saint. Okay. What else? Speaker 13: This guy in the center is probably one of the lead authority figures in this group because his body is facing toward us, and his body scale is a little larger, seemingly, than some of the other ones—just the width of him. Briana Zavadil White: He's spread out, right? The way that the artist has positioned him we actually see his whole body, not profile. All inventors, right? So, we've got Franklin as the Father of Science and Invention watching over all of these men, okay? One of the reasons why we know that they're all inventors is because—this is when it all fits so nicely together for you as educators—because these men are placed in this portrait with their inventions, with models of their inventions. You've got the Colt Revolver; you've got McCormick's mechanical reaper; you have Goodyear's rubber soled shoes right here. I have had so many conversations—I was just having a conversation this morning with two of the Portrait Gallery's historians, and for the life of us, we just don't know what this is! This is the telegraph. We think that this is a model for a printing press. This is a sewing machine. And the carpet loom. And one of the reasons that we know that we're smack dab in the Civil War for this portrait is the facial hair. Think about it, Abraham Lincoln—with the facial hair—I mean, we're very much in that style. So, you've all been very curious about the individuals, and the lighting, and the way that they're faced, so here's my question to all of you: You are the preeminent inventors of the era; are you all going to have time to come together and have time to sit for your portrait to be painted? Group: No. Briana Zavadil White: No, absolutely not. So what the artist, Christian Schussele, has done in this portrait—just like he did with Washington Irving and his friends at Sunnyside right there—is he sketched them individually from life, so the connection between the artist and the sitter, and then brought them together in his imagination. Okay? So this is why we've got a little bit of strange lighting right here. It's also why most of these men don't necessarily seem to be looking at each other. I mean, they're looking in the same general direction, but it's not as if it's a straight-on conversation.

Speaker 1: It's like a memoir. Like it's telling about his history, not just that moment in time. Speaker 2: Somebody made it to show honor or respect to him. Was he president at the time? When was it painted, like right then or after? Briana Zavadil White: So even though we're seeing "Grant, 1863," the question is: Is this 1863 or not? Is it later? Speaker 3: I think it's later. Briana Zavadil White: It is later, it's 1865. Alright? So when you know that this is Grant at Vicksburg and it's 1865, what does that tell us? Speaker 4: Well, I mean, he was a failure. He was considered a failure in so many different ways. And looking at him, you know, Vicksburg was a big deal; it effectively split the South in two. So it was a big deal. You look at this and Hey, look, I am a— Speaker 5: But I think he looks sad. I don't think he looks like "I am—"; I think he looks sad. Speaker 4: He brought—he pulled himself back up. Speaker 6: The frame is black, and I find that odd—I don't think I've ever seen a frame at all like that. I mean, black is usually mourning. Speaker 7: Black and gold. Briana Zavadil White: My sense is that it's probably meant to contrast with the gold. We've got the acorns referencing oak leaves, and oak leaves are a symbol of strength, right? So it could be it's meant for the battles and for the acorns to stand out. Speaker 8: It's like somebody wants us to know that he's not a guy who just sits around and signs things, he is a man of action and taking charge of whatever. It's all done and now he's in the midst of this mess, not sitting in a tent waiting to hear how it turned out. Speaker 9: And I think his face—I do, I just see this poignancy in his eyes like glory has pain. That's that look in his eye. Speaker 10: The frame and his positioning in the picture makes it seem like he's trying to promote an agenda. Briana Zavadil White: I don’t necessarily know if the portrait was created for him. What I can tell you though is that the artist who created it, Ole Peter Hansen Balling—he was a Norwegian, I believe—he also created the portrait of John Brown that you took a look at out there. He also created Grant and His Generals, I saw some of you looking at it; it's that huge 10 by 16 portrait. This was an artist who did portraits on the side of the Union, right, and so he was commemorating. Especially with that portrait of Brown, that painting was created in 1872, long after Brown had been hung. In a way, I guess the question is: Are these portraits acting as propaganda? Speaker 11: With an agenda? Briana Zavadil White: Maybe a little bit. Right? Right?

Speaker 1: He's leaning forward like he's engaged, he's not passive. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, what else? Speaker 1: Because, you know, sitting is a passive act. Speaker 2: Also, even though he's in a suit, it's ruffled and it has the wrinkles in it. So that whole, common man, rail-splitter platform that he won the election with. Speaker 1: Even the cuff of his pants is caught up in his boot. Speaker 2: And that jacket being so crumpled in his chair. Speaker 1: His boots look a little worn, they don't look new. Speaker 3: There's a neat line that I thought of when I read—when I saw this picture; he said—they were talking to his law partner—"he had a slow but tenacious quality of his mind," [he] noted that Lincoln's "intellect worked not quickly nor brilliantly, but exhaustively. He not only went to the root of the question, but dug up the root, separated and analyzed every fiber of the root before he would come to a decision." Briana Zavadil White: I wonder what could you do—how could you make the connection with your students between that quote and this portrait. What could you have them do? Speaker 2: Pose it in a way that would represent them. Speaker 1: Make cartoon balloons of what he's thinking at that moment in time, because that would go with that thought process. Speaker 3: Yeah, he's certainly not thinking about what to eat for lunch. Speaker 4: I don't know, I think—some of the things that I read, like, at the Ford's Theatre talked about how these people were petitioning for places on his cabinet, and that he would listen to them, and that he's seen Sojourner Truth—it just seems like he was a listener. And that to me looks like he's almost listening to somebody talk attentively, he didn't brush people off—is what I kind of got the impression. Briana Zavadil White: So you're getting this feeling of him listening to somebody telling him something. Okay, interesting. Speaker 1: There's no accoutrements, there's no symbolism, there's no draped background, there's no mini log cabin on the floor. It's just him and the chair and the room. Briana Zavadil White: It lacks the objects, right? We know that there's a setting; it's most likely some sort of studio type of setting, right? But, again, like Sherman, we're forced to focus on Lincoln himself. So this particular piece—people always flock to it. It always strikes them for some reason, and maybe it's the pose, maybe it is that there isn't a lot of the extra stuff in it, but this particular image—which is by the artist George P. A. Healy—is actually a replica. Everybody knows the difference between a copy and a replica, right? A replica is a piece created by the same artist who completed the original, and a copy is a piece created by somebody entirely different. So here's the sneaky detail about this portrait, Lincoln had already died when Healey painted The Peacemakers. So he had to use a model, and then he used, mostly likely, photographs of Lincoln to create this likeness. Isn't that interesting? So, similar to the Brown downstairs—that portrait, like I said, is 1872—the artist had to use photographs from the trial to create the likeness. Alright, be in a position where you can see this portrait. Tell me about Lincoln's expression here. Speaker 2: At peace. Briana Zavadil White: At peace, what makes you say that? Speaker 2: He has somewhat of a smile on his face. Speaker 5: Relaxed. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Does everybody agree that he has somewhat of a smile on his face. Speaker 4: He looks tired to me. Speaker 1: I don't think he looks peaceful. Briana Zavadil White: You don't think he looks peaceful. What's giving you the impression of him looking tired? Speaker 6: The eyes. Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to say the eyes. And the shoulders are kind of slouched a little bit. He just looks tired. Speaker 1: His hair is just sort of ruffled around his ears. Briana Zavadil White: Kind of a bit unkempt, Lincoln is known for that certainly. Speaker 1: The big bags under his eyes. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. So we've got these bags, right, under his eyes here. And tell me about his cheeks. Multiple Speakers: Sunken. Briana Zavadil White: They're sunken in. What else? Speaker 1: His bowtie is askew. Briana Zavadil White: His bowtie is askew, isn't it? And it's always so interesting because this is a formal photograph, right? And yet, here we have Lincoln with his bowtie askew and his hair sort of a little disheveled, okay? It really is a true likeness of Lincoln because that's how he often was portrayed. Speaker 2: He looks like a common man. Briana Zavadil White: So, this is a photograph; where is the focus? Because we all can see a focal point, we also can see a blurred piece of the portrait. So what becomes the focus? Speaker 8: His face. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Right really in the middle of his face, right? And then everything else gets blurred out from there. Speaker 3: The crack of the glass plate negative is a focal point though, too. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, and everybody sees that? Speaker 3: That wasn't intentional though. Briana Zavadil White: No, it absolutely wasn't. It absolutely wasn't. So is this—we certainly know, think about the plaster cast on the other side. You can tell that this is Lincoln, right, at the end of the war. This is February 5, 1865. This is one of the last formal sittings that Lincoln sat for. And this wasn't the only portrait of him that was created on that day in Alexander Gardner's studio, but the reason why this particular image was saved is because of that slight smile. Speaker 2: He did accomplish what he set out to do: he kept the Union together. And that was the goal. Briana Zavadil White: I want you to think about all of the photographs of Lincoln that you've seen. Do you ever see that expression? Multiple Speakers: No. Briana Zavadil White: No. The crack has taken on so much importance in contemporary times. But the reason why, again, the portrait was kept then, was because of the expression on his face. People talk now about how the crack is a foreshadowing of his assassination, and how it's separating North from South—but that's all contemporary ideas. Absolutely. I would urge you—and I saw that you have the Lincoln Smithsonian in your classroom, right? Did you get that? So the Portrait Gallery partnered up with the Center for Education and Museum Studies to create that issue. So in that issue you will have this piece, along with the life masks, as well as the Cooper Union carte-de-visite that I was telling you about downstairs. It really does provide a nice comparison between Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War and Lincoln at the end of the Civil War. The other thing that you're going to get as well—and I think it's either on the CD or in your folder—is a lesson about the chronology of Lincoln. So I'm giving you about 20 different images of Lincoln spanning from I think 1857 to 1865 for your students to be able to consider that chronology and place—really place the portraits in order and to do it visually.

Suzannah Niepold: Just having lived in this country, you have all the background knowledge, all the tools you need, to analyze this and have some understanding of maybe what the artist is trying to say. It's a good starting point. I want you to use a really basic looking tool called the "Observation/Interpretation Chart," has anyone done anything like this before? Okay, yeah, it's pretty familiar. The goal is just to separate what you see from what you think it means. But it's more challenging for kids than you might think. Hopefully it will give them the tools they need to write a good historical argument, because you're essentially coming up with all your evidence, and then using that evidence to make an argument. So let's just start. Our goal is just to make a long list of observations based on this piece. What is it that you see here? Multiple Speakers: License plates. Suzannah Niepold: License plates. Okay, that's a— Speaker 1: State names. Speaker 2: Does spelling count? Speaker 3: Not for the HSA. Speaker 4: Somebody said state names. Speaker 5: ABC—yeah, alphabetical— Suzannah Niepold: Alphabetical order. The plates are in alphabetical order by. . .? Multiple Speakers: State. Speaker 2: Or district. Suzannah Niepold: There was some stuff over here I missed. Speaker 4: Common colors—white, blue, yellow, green. Speaker 5: It's "We the people of the. . . ." Suzannah Niepold: Ah, so it spells something out on the license plates. Speaker 1: It's the Preamble! Suzannah Niepold: The Preamble of the Constitution. Speaker 5: It's like each license plate has a state theme. Suzannah Niepold: How does it have a state theme? Speaker 5: On some of it. Like Alabama, "Heart of Dixie." Not all of them. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so some of them have text— Suzannah Niepold: What else do you see on individual license plates? Speaker 6: A year. Speaker 5: Yeah, the year. And the artwork behind, depending on if it's just the plain—some are just two colors, some have three colors, some have like a picture behind it. Speaker 7: It's on the seat of a car, right? That somebody flattened out. Suzannah Niepold: Ah, so looking at the background reminds you of a seat of a car. Speaker 7: Like at a rest stop, or that you'd see in a diner or a drive-in or something. Suzannah Niepold: What do you see that makes you think diner or drive-in? What is it about the— Speaker 4: The metal on the outside of the cushiony seat. Speaker 5: And the color coordination. Suzannah Niepold: So the materials in the background make you think of the diner/drive-in or car seat. Speaker 8: How about six, five, six, six, five, six, five—in terms of how many license plates are in each row. Suzannah Niepold: So there's a pattern, there's not always the same number of license plates in a row, but it does alternate sort of sixes and fives. Speaker 2: Some have natural features on them while others are political statements. Suzannah Niepold: So the types of things chosen by the state, some are natural features and some are political. Speaker 5: It looks like some of them actually have—like Alabama has a tag on when they had to renew it and some don't, like if you look at Colorado, there's no dates on Colorado. Alabama's actually—it depends. And the number one color of the license plates—the background—tends to be white. The dominant color. Suzannah Niepold: That's good. A couple of people are noticing the dates on them, some of them have them, some of them don't, there's a bit of a range. Speaker 10: On most of the individual plates the words don't make sense by themselves. A couple do, like Hawaii is "none" and South Dakota is "this," but for the most part if you just look at one plate it doesn't really make much sense, it's just a couple of letters or numbers. Suzannah Niepold: So, looked at individually it's rare that a single license plate will have a word on it that makes sense. Is there anything else design-wise that is common to the license plates? Speaker 2: They're rectangles. Suzannah Niepold: So all the same shape. Speaker 3: They're bolted in with four bolts. Suzannah Niepold: Bolted in with four bolts, and those bolts are in the same location, right? Speaker 7: Deal with mass production for cars. Suzannah Niepold: There's evidence that these were mass-produced instead of custom made. Alright, are we ready to start moving into this column? Thinking about all of this as evidence, what do we think the artist is trying to say? Why did he put these license plates together to spell out the Preamble? And what does that tell us about our country? Speaker 2: Because all of them together is what shows us what our country is made of and really is the foundation of the nation, that we can't really go back to the Civil War era—we're not divided, we have to be all together. Suzannah Niepold: It's putting them all together is, how did you say, the spirit of the country? Speaker 2: Spirit of the country, basically what makes us make sense. Suzannah Niepold: So we are indivisible, we've come out of the Civil War and we're still part of the Union. Now what—: Speaker 4: It's obviously the shift to car culture, and that, you know, we are a nation of highways that are interconnected and the car is the way we get to places, we move from the cities to the suburbs, we move from Route 66. It's become—we're a nation of cars and highways. Suzannah Niepold: So his choice to use license plates is not random? Multiple Speakers: Right. Suzannah Niepold: He's really using that material to make another point about how we're a car culture. And that's another connection, right? As you mentioned, the highways connect all the states. Speaker 5: I also think it brings out the individual characteristics and history of each state, but yet we're all, as everyone has said, connected and that's what makes us strong. Yet, we each have flavor and things that are unique that make each state special. Suzannah Niepold: Great, so everyone had the theme or the slogan that you noticed, the symbols, whether they're natural environment or political symbols. The "flavor" is a great way to put it, but as he said, we're all indivisible; we're all part of the Union. I think maybe that pattern emphasizes that as well.

Suzannah Niepold: What's going on in this picture? Speaker 1: Relaxing after a hard day of work. Suzannah Niepold: What do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 1: You see both of the gentlemen sitting there who are sort of resting, as well as this younger gentleman over here. The little girl looks like she's kind of tired too. Speaker 2: The boots. Hanging. Suzannah Niepold: There are boots hanging here, okay. Speaker 3: He's got like work clothes on, and they look undone. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so these look like his work clothes, how can you tell? Speaker 4: There are holes in them. Dirty shoes. Speaker 5: He's smoking a pipe. And the gun resting on the knee of the older gentleman. So maybe they were hunting? Speaker 6: They may be calloused, his hands [have] different coloration. So just outdoor work. Suzannah Niepold: So signs that they spend their time working outdoors. We noticed this man is smoking a pipe, this man is holding a gun. The pipe might add to the sense that they're relaxing after a hard day, and the gun might be an indication that they've been out hunting. Speaker 5: The black one looks like a hunting dog, the yellow one doesn't. Speaker 7: And there's another little one over underneath that the boy's playing with. Suzannah Niepold: This is one that's a little bit harder to see, especially if you're looking at this in reproduction, but there's a little tiny dog over here and then the two in the front. What makes this one look more like a hunting dog than the other two? Speaker 8: It looks like a Labrador. Suzannah Niepold: So it’s a breed we associate with hunting. Speaker 5: The yellow one looks like a herding dog. Suzannah Niepold: The title—which some of you might have noticed, we're not doing as much to cover it up this time—it's called A Dog Swap. What does that tell us about the picture? Speaker 7: So he's saying goodbye to his dog. Speaker 3: Or he's thinking about whether to go through with this or not. 'Cause he looks very pensive and the other guy looks like he's waiting for him to make up his mind. Speaker 8: He certainly has his gun there to make sure that he's— [laughter] Suzannah Niepold: You did something when you said waiting, you went forward a little bit, and I think that this man is leaning forward, which indicates that maybe he's waiting for an answer. As you said, this man is looking more pensive, more thoughtful. Speaker 1: Maybe that's why the little girl is sad? Maybe that's going to be her pet they're giving away. Speaker 5: Look at that little puppy, don't give him away! Speaker 1: They're going to give the black dog away because you can see he's kinda like comforting him, like don’t worry you'll be okay. Speaker 3: I think the little boy is interesting because he's kind of like fading into the background. Speaker 7: He's looking away. Suzannah Niepold: He's looking away, he's faded into the background a little bit. Why do you think the artist might have done that? Speaker 9: Maybe he's attached to the dog. Suzannah Niepold: Oh, he's attached to the dog. So why is he facing away? Speaker 9: It's his dog. Suzannah Niepold: Now what else is the little boy doing? Speaker 7: Playing with the other— Speaker 10: Focusing on a new dog. Suzannah Niepold: Yes, he's playing with this one. Speaker 10: Out with the— Speaker 9: Somebody's already said, we're getting a new dog. Suzannah Niepold: So he's coping with it by turning away, playing with the little puppy. Why do you think the choice of dog is important to this family? Speaker 7: It looks like they're in a field—so maybe, if the other dog is, like she said, a herding dog then it would be more working for them, for their livelihood, I guess. Speaker 10: Maybe this is a stretch, is that a fishing net? Suzannah Niepold: So they're using the land, they've got a fishing net. Speaker 8: You can see fencing in the background. Speaker 9: You've got your cabbage and collards up front. Speaker 7: One would assume that makes it a community kind of situation where people are helping each other; perhaps they are dependent on each other. Hunter-man brings meat, and this family farms. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so maybe it's a community exchange. Speaker 3: Some kind of sharecropping. Suzannah Niepold: What else can you tell about their daily life and the condition of their home? Speaker 1: A dirt entryway. Speaker 7: You can tell in terms of relationships, Mom's in the doorway kind of hovering in the back with what looks to be the older daughter. So the women are kind of back away from the decision making of this or in the home, so to speak. Suzannah Niepold: So the decisions are being made by the men, the women are a bit farther away. Speaker 7: Yeah, because even the boy is outside. Suzannah Niepold: Someone mentioned sharecropping, this painting is from 1881, the artist is from Warrington, VA, so not too far away. So if this is painted after the Civil War, a little bit even after Reconstruction, what do we know about the lives of these people? Speaker 8: They're very, very tough. Suzannah Niepold: Tough how? Speaker 8: They're having to make their own way in a segregated society where nobody's looking out for them. And sharecropping—very tough, very tough occupation. Suzannah Niepold: Tough life. As you noticed in the beginning, probably working outside, working the land, getting food however they can—whether it's growing things, fishing, hunting. What are maybe some of the advantages though? Multiple Speakers: Free; self-sufficient; freedom Suzannah Niepold: Self-sufficiency, freedom. Speaker 9: Autonomy. Suzannah Niepold: Autonomy. Speaker 7: You have the ability to build relationships, remember we were talking about the community. Before you could be sold off and not have a family and not be a part of a family. Speaker 3: And they're trading property that they have now, which before they would not have been able to. Suzannah Niepold: So they have property. So the dogs maybe represent that. Someone mentioned family; I think that's very important that you have a family group together.

Suzannah Niepold: This is a work that I find really interesting because even though it's really an everyday scene there's a lot of maybe kind of misconceptions that feed our interpretation of this work. So I'm interested to see what you can make of it. What's going on in this picture? Speaker 1: There are no men. Suzannah Niepold: There are no men, so it's all women. And what else? Speaker 2: These little girls are fighting. Suzannah Niepold: How can you tell that they're fighting? Speaker 2: Because the one girl is yelling at her, wearing red, and the little girl in blue has her hands at her hips and is like nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah. So, you can tell they're fighting. Suzannah Niepold: So the artist gives us some really clear body language. The girl in the red top sort of leaning forward, mouth wide open, the other girls have kind of squinchy faces. Speaker 3: It seems like school, like parents dropping their kids off or picking their kids up or something. Speaker 4: The moms don't look real happy. Suzannah Niepold: So there's not any sort of bright smiles on any of the women's faces. How about the scene as a whole, what do you think the mood of the whole picture is? Speaker 1: Well, could it be Sunday? Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm thinking it could be Sunday. Because the mother has a flower on her lapel. It could be Sunday. Suzannah Niepold: Without looking at the title, which is going to give it away, how can we tell if it’s a school-related thing, as you first thought, or a Sunday, like church perhaps. Speaker 6: There's no religious imagery in it. Speaker 3: A couple of them have books, but the books are different colors, and they don't say Bible. There's nothing that looks churchy, there are no crosses. Speaker 1: There's nobody wearing hats, that's churchy. Speaker 5: None of them are wearing hats. Speaker 2: Not all of them. Speaker 3: There's one woman in a hat. Speaker 7: Is that a graduation hat? Suzannah Niepold: You know, that's one of the misconceptions again because it has that kind of flat top. But if you look at it closely it's not a mortarboard, it’s a fancy hat. Speaker 7: They're all wearing dresses. Speaker 8: I was thinking '50s. Speaker 5: Girls didn't wear pants back then. Speaker 6: If it's Sunday, where are there husbands and sons and brothers? Speaker 5: It could be a Women's Day; I've gone to Women's Day events before. So it could be Women's Day. Suzannah Niepold: Someone mentioned there are no churches in the background, can you identify any types of buildings in the background? Speaker 5: I don't know—it looks like a school. Suzannah Niepold: But which part looks like a school and how can you tell? Speaker 7: The left. Speaker 5: But a lot of churches are in schools. I went to church in a storefront, so—back then, I don't see a storefront, but I used to go to church here in Maryland in a school. I think it's probably a school or a church event. So it doesn't necessarily have to be "school" because people don't always go—in urban settings, people don't always have access to a church building. They do church in different buildings. Speaker 2: I think their skirts are too short for church. Speaker 9: That's what I was thinking, that one girl kneeling— Suzannah Niepold: Some of the evidence I hear for school is that this fence was built maybe to control people, to keep them in, so maybe the playground is inside the fence. As you said, there's no men, it's all women and female children. The clothing will throw your students off, they're not used to an everyday scene where everyone is in dresses or everyone is dressed up. What else is going on, what else can you find? Speaker 4: It reminds me of Baltimore with the red brick and the stoops and the Federalist architecture. Speaker 6: The obvious thing to me is that there's black and white children and that right central there's an African American woman holding the hand of an African American child and what appears to be a white child has her arm wrapped around that woman. Speaker 3: It seems the African American women are the ones caring for the kids. And maybe the mom's coming to get her? Speaker 5: But they're not wearing maid uniforms. Suzannah Niepold: So the adults, unless I'm getting this wrong, are all African American—or the ones that I can see. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 4: She's raising her hand. Suzannah Niepold: But there are children, there are Caucasian children. Speaker 5: Well, wouldn't the Caucasian children be with their nannies? Speaker 9: That's what I was wondering, are they nannies? Suzannah Niepold: Are they nannies, or what other roles could they be filling? If it's a school scene— Multiple Speakers: Teachers. Suzannah Niepold: If this is a school, what do we know about the school based on the people that we see. Speaker 5: All girls. Speaker 6: It's mixed. Suzannah Niepold: It's mixed, it's not segregated by race, just by gender. Speaker 5: I don't know, African American people are all different colors, so when I see someone who's lighter I don't assume they're white. Suzannah Niepold: That's true, sometimes you can get into dangerous— Speaker 5: I'm not saying they are or aren't at this point, I'm not saying that. Suzannah Niepold: You're right, so we can leave it as an open question mark. But there are certainly children with—just literally white, not even peach-colored. Speaker 6: Right, because that girl with her hand up stands out to me in the back. She's like waving; I can't tell what she's doing. Speaker 7: It's almost designed to draw your attention. Suzannah Niepold: The title is School's Out, so whoever said end of the daym whoever said school, they're borne out by the title. It's 1936. What part of the country would we imagine this to be? You said it looks a little like Baltimore. Speaker 10: Gotta be in the North. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, why does it have to be in the North? Speaker 10: Because of the integrated school. Suzannah Niepold: And why does it have to be a big city? How can we tell that about the image? Speaker 4: Because of the Federalist architecture. Speaker 6: And that's a lot of people. You wouldn't have that many children of that age in a small town school. Suzannah Niepold: This artist—one of the reasons that we always put the birth and the death dates and locations of the artist is to try and give you a sense of where the scene might be and what their background knowledge is. Allan Rohan Crite spent most of his life in Boston. So we think, based on an interview with him, that this is a South Boston school in 1936. If you look at the history of segregation in the schools—because he is an African American artist, this is an African American show—is that the schools were desegregated in the 19th century, but the neighborhoods weren't. So because the schools were just organized by neighborhood they were still vastly majority African American school or white school. So here you see maybe a few who either are light-skinned or are white, but certainly the majority are African American.

Suzannah Niepold: So again, just take a minute to observe the detail before we talk about it. What's going on in this artwork? Speaker 1: It's looking kind of at a study of Africa, of African culture. Suzannah Niepold: What do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 1: The books that I can see from here are about—you've got Africa and Asia, The Soul of Africa, the book there Africa Since 1413. Suzannah Niepold: So the book titles are turning into a bit of a clue about the artist's intention or message for the entire work. And something that really pops out to you is Africa. Speaker 2: Americans in particular like W.E.B Du Bois and the language that of course then was used, so you certainly see like the African American experience. Suzannah Niepold: It's an African American experience but tied back to Africa, which is appropriate since we are in the American Art Museum. Speaker 1: Then you have some odd ones that seem out of place, like Pushkin. Speaker 3: And some of covers seem more worn than others. Suzannah Niepold: Some of the books are maybe more worn, more well read than others. Are there any in particular that look more worn? Speaker 3: The Du Bois book. Suzannah Niepold: Because the title is wearing off a little bit. Speaker 4: She has then N and the A Encyclopedias of Knowledge, Culture, and I don't know what that word is on the bottom shelf. Suzannah Niepold: Yeah, it doesn’t always give you the title. So there's a repeated theme in the encyclopedias, that the volumes on the shelf refer to the N words or the A words. Speaker 1: Well the n-word is right there. Suzannah Niepold: Yes. And that is an issue, obviously, if you're using this in schools, and if you want to talk about that we certainly can. I use it only on a kind of case-by-case basis depending on the teacher and the class in school. But this can be kind of a major point of discussion with kids, the language that's used in the text. What more can you find? Speaker 5: I think I'm in debate on "sob," if it's really "sob" or if it's son of a— Suzannah Niepold: So there are these words here that could be read as "sob" or could be read as "S.O.B." Again, with prior approval from the teacher I have taught that acronym to about 300 8th-graders at this point. Doing well! What else do you notice about the words, how are they painted? What are they? Speaker 4: Her thoughts. Suzannah Niepold: Her thoughts. Where do we recognize that as thoughts from? Where do we get that? Multiple Speakers: Comics. Suzannah Niepold: Cartoons, comic books, so that's one kind of influence on this artwork. What more can you find? Speaker 6: She seems to be looking out somewhere. We see this window here, I don't know if she's looking at someone or out the window. Suzannah Niepold: How can you tell where she's looking? Speaker 6: Well, I mean just from the way her face is turned, her eyes are directed someplace other than— Suzannah Niepold: Everything—her face and her eyes are directed up here and directed away from the books. Speaker 7: I don't think it's her house. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, tell me what do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 7: I just look at how she's dressed, she's got on heeled shoes, she might—from where I'm thinking—just be visiting and all of a sudden inspecting somebody else's library. And then she just starts pulling off these books, and then she turns and maybe she just has a question or a strong feeling. Suzannah Niepold: Ah, strong feeling. Well, we see her thoughts. Speaker 4: So she may be listening to someone and thinking. And then she's also sitting on the floor, you're right, she's dressed up, but she's sitting on the floor. Speaker 3: What about those two books on the second shelf? The Slavery of Freedom and Black Women and White America almost as like questioning of the future, what's been lost? Speaker 8: I see bookshelves like this every ay at the office because you're always trying to figure out who the occupant is based on what they're reading. One of the things that kind of connects the books for me is this idea that Africa is interesting and significant as long as it's impacting white people. Africa becomes interesting when we start exporting slaves, Slavery to Freedomm you know it's the ownership of African Americans that makes it important. It's not interesting in and of itself, but only in its implications. Which would make me say either "sob" or "S.O.B." Suzannah Niepold: Yes. That's interesting, first of all because by looking at a bookshelf we can tell a lot about the identity of the owner of the bookshelf, who has arranged or even curated that collection of books. And also that so many of these are focused on Africa after European contact and the impact on this country. All of these books, I don't know if you've ever read any of them, but they are all real. We did end up featuring this in one of our programs I work on with 8th-grade students because the teacher, when selecting works with me, came up and said my parents had the same bookshelf. Not literally the same bookshelf, this very kind of fragile—maybe it's meaningful that the artist put this one spindly leg out there so that the whole history is going to just crash down. But she really related to this and she wanted to kind of bring some ideas together in her classroom and she was comfortable bringing out some of the more uncomfortable history, which, depending on your class and your group and how well you know them, you may not be. So this is one of the more challenging works, but the result, the product we got, we had students write about this work, were in the end deeply meaningful and they found real relevance to their own histories here. So we found it worth it in that situation.

Suzannah Niepold: Some of you jumped right into this, but what's going on in this picture right here? Speaker 1: Segregation. Suzannah Niepold: Segregation. What do you see that makes you say that? Speaker 1: The big wall in the middle of the room. Suzannah Niepold: Big wall in the middle of the room. What more can you find? Speaker 1: Not equal. You've got the fan on the one side; the bartender is on the white side. Suzannah Niepold: The bar tender is on the white side of the bar; the fan is on that side of the bar. Speaker 2: Is the bartender holding a paper? Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to figure that out, it kinda looks like a face. Suzannah Niepold: What about his face? Speaker 3: No, this looks like a face, like, I feel like it's one of those cartoons, this is like the nose. We're trying to figure it out. Suzannah Niepold: Yes, it almost looks like there's a profile in possibly the newspaper he's holding; the shadow creates the image of a face. If that was intentional, what do you think the artist was trying to do there? What could it mean? Speaker 4: Have the white man looking at himself and actually reflecting upon what he's created, essentially. Looking at himself in the mirror, so to speak. Suzannah Niepold: Looking at himself in the mirror and reflecting on what he's created. And what has he created? Speaker 4: A segregated society, inequality, and divisiveness. Speaker 5: Unhappiness from the looks of all the people. Suzannah Niepold: So divisiveness, unhappiness, inequality. Are these kind of separate but equal? We talked about the fan and about the fact that he's sitting on this side of the bar. Is there anything else you notice that's different about the two sides? Speaker 3: There are physically more people on that side versus this side. Speaker 6: Am I mistaken, is this a woman on this side? Suzannah Niepold: In red, I believe. I would read that as a woman. Speaker 6: Okay, so that means something—I'm not sure what. Speaker 7: I don't know whether the character is either—I think he's dancing. Suzannah Niepold: The man with his hand up this way? Okay, that's one way to sort of read that pose. Speaker 7: And then over his shoulder there's another face. Suzannah Niepold: So there's maybe someone facing him and dancing with him. What does that tell you about this side of the room? There's a woman here, and maybe a second woman dancing with the man. Do you get a sense of the mood or the personality of this side as opposed to this side? Speaker 8: This one looks much more happy. This one, everyone looks angry or shady, or like something's going down. Suzannah Niepold: Shady, what do you see that makes you say shady? Speaker 8: I mean, this guy's like looking over his shoulder, that guy has his hat pulled down. And this side as much as it's not equal, they don't have the fan and things, I feel like they're having a better time. It's almost like they have their own—it's a different type of freedom. Suzannah Niepold: So some of the expressions and poses on this side are very—hat pulled down, over the shoulder, kind of angry looking or "shady," as you said. Speaker 9: The back of the bar's like lopsided—I don't know if that makes sense. Suzannah Niepold: How—well, tell me about the lopsided idea. Speaker 9: Well, it's not equal—it's not straight, I don't know. Speaker 10: I think it's really the white guy's perspective, too. You can tell that he's over here, if he's looking at it. So he painted himself on that side of the picture. Suzannah Niepold: So the artist put himself on the white half of the picture so that the person looking at it sees off to one side. We're not looking at it straight on, with the wall just being a thin shape, we're seeing the line of the wall. Speaker 1: A lot of bars have mirrors on the back, so, actually, the artist could be sitting— Suzannah Niepold: Yes, could be facing the mirror. Speaker 10: What's the year? Suzannah Niepold: 1941. Speaker 11: And the doorways, maybe it's just the angle, but the doorways are shorter—one's larger than the other, it appears. Suzannah Niepold: But we notice there's two doorways. Speaker 11: There's two doorways, exactly. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so what else does that tell us? Multiple Speakers: They have separate entrances. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so separate entrances. Almost trying to create two entirely separate spaces. What's interesting about the date this work was created is that Lawrence, as a Northern artist—he's born in New Jersey, he moves to Harlem, spends most of his life in Harlem. This is his first trip to the South, so it's his first experience with segregation. And he chooses to paint this. This is the year after his famous Migration Series, and if you know that series you know he's painted the South a great deal; he's kind of told those stories but he's never actually been there himself. So this is representing his first experience of being in a segregated place.

Suzannah Niepold: Next to this is another Jacob Lawrence, he painted this as a study for a mural for New York State on the theme of "Community." Notice again, it’s hard to see unless you come up a little bit closer to it. How is the mood of this piece maybe a little bit different from the mood of this piece? Speaker 1: It’s a little bit lighter; everyone’s together. Suzannah Niepold: Lighter, everyone is together. There’s not that big wall in the middle. Speaker 2: Lots of smiles. Suzannah Niepold: Yes, really exaggerated smiles on the faces of the people. Speaker 3: A sense of cooperation, people are bringing their tools, somebody’s already started working. Suzannah Niepold: So it’s a cooperative, productive environment of creation. Speaker 4: It’s not so much social, versus professional—for lack of a better term. Suzannah Niepold: And then the other contrast we can draw on this wall is this piece over here. This is later, this is 1962. And it’s interesting having it in the context of other works by African American artists, especially dealing with civil rights, because it is, of course, very different—it’s abstract. How can you read—in fact, come up closer, I'm sorry to make you keep moving, but you really need to see. What do you notice about this piece here? Speaker 1: Red, white, and blue. Suzannah Niepold: Okay, so red, white, and blue—we associate with America, American flags. Speaker 2: We’re looking at regionalism here in the United States? I don’t know. Speaker 3: Each color is in its own area. Suzannah Niepold: So how would you—where does the United States fit into this? Where do you see that? Speaker 2: Red, white, and blue, but then I can take West Coast, I can take the North, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Southeast. Suzannah Niepold: So are you saying that you see the shape of the country? Speaker 2: If you wanna see it you can, yeah. Suzannah Niepold: That is the joy of abstract art, right? No, you’re not the only one to see the shape of the country in the colors; so maybe we’re looking at regional differences. Knowing that this is about civil rights, does anything start to emerge with the colors? Speaker 4: Upside-down peace symbol? Speaker 5: Abstract Klansmen. Suzannah Niepold: Can you point any out specifically? Speaker 5: I don’t know, that kind of strikes me— Speaker 6: Horsemen there, and this turns into flames when you put— Suzannah Niepold: So then the white maybe represents the white robes of the Klan, what might the other colors start to represent? Blood, flames, smoke, absolutely. So the red, white, and blue is kind of transformed into something very different. The title of the work is “Evening Rendezvous.” Why choose the title “Evening Rendezvous” rather than, you know, "Meeting of the Klan"? Speaker 7: It sounds a lot better. Suzannah Niepold: But it sounds better in what way? Speaker 7: I mean, it doesn’t sound bad. Speaker 3: Nothing bad is happening. Suzannah Niepold: Nothing bad is happening, it’s part of what’s going on. Speaker 8: They did things in secret; if people knew they were coming, they’d probably run.