Picturing America School Collaboration Projects

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Building on the national distribution of Picturing America, the National Endowment for the Humanities invites proposals for local and regional projects that foster collaboration between K-12 educators and humanities scholars to encourage engagement with the rich resources of American art to tell America’s story. The Picturing America School Collaboration Projects grant opportunity is designed to help teachers and librarians whose schools display the Picturing America images form connections with courses in the core curriculum. These projects will be grounded in the great works of art included in Picturing America, which is part of the Endowment’s We the People program. Information aboutPicturing America, including the Picturing America Teachers Resource Book, can be found by visiting the Picturing America Web site. The images in Picturing America reflect a variety of media spanning several centuries, ranging from the work of early American Indian artists to painters such as Mary Cassatt and Jacob Lawrence, from photographers such as Dorothea Lange to architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright. These images will help students better understand America’s diverse people and places and connect them to our nation’s travails and triumphs. This history is reflected in the themes of Picturing America: Leadership, Freedom and Equality, Democracy, Courage, Landscape, and Creativity and Ingenuity. Goals of the Picturing America School Collaboration Projects grants are: to strengthen understanding of the connections between great works of American art and significant events, themes, and topics in the American experience; to encourage local and regional collaboration between K-12 educators and humanities experts who can bring appropriate knowledge to the integration of American artworks in core subjects; to foster discussion of how to use the Picturing America images among K-12 educators within a locality or region; and to provide access to rich scholarly resources and primary materials that support teaching. In order to provide a forum for exploring and deepening students’ understanding of art, American history, government, social studies, literature, language arts, civics, and other core subjects, funded projects should support one or more conferences of one or two days each; accommodate at each conference twenty-four to one hundred (or more) participants, all of whom would have access to the Picturing America portfolio; and provide opportunities for participants to engage with scholars, museum and library professionals, and other experts. Successful proposals for local and regional projects will present a conference schedule of plenary and concurrent sessions in engaging formats that provide opportunities for participants to observe or demonstrate models for teaching American art, history, and culture with the Picturing America portfolio and accompanying Teachers Resource Book; and explore the curricular value of Picturing America for core subjects (for example, using images in the teaching of history or literature as a powerful investigative tool, a stimulus to Socratic inquiry, or a catalyst to improve student writing).

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