Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Odd Jewels Tour, Part One

In November and December, the third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders explored the gallery adjacent to the Kathryn Andrews: Run for President exhibition.  Special exhibition artists are often invited to select works of art from the Nasher's collection to be on view during their exhibition; in this case, Kathryn Andrews selected all the works of art on view in this gallery.  While talking about her selections, she referred to them as "odd jewels."  At the beginning of the tour, we discussed the meaning of the words odd and jewels and kept those words in mind as we viewed different works of art.

Visit 2 Vocabulary:

enlarge / agrandar
plane / el plano
dream / sueño
relationship / relación
context / contexto

The students began the tour by writing a poem about themselves, which they read to a partner.

3rd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

5th grade

5th grade

5th grade
Below are a few examples of the students' poems.




Next, the students divided into three groups. Each group was assigned to one of the following sculptures and used the same template to write a poem about the artwork.
Constructed Head No. 2 by Naum Gabo
Head of a Woman (Tête de femme) by Pablo Picasso
Running Man at 2,550,116 by Jonathan Borofsky
3rd grade

3rd grade

3rd grade

3rd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

4th grade

5th grade

5th grade

5th grade

5th grade
Working individually or in groups, the students adopted the perspective of the figure in the sculpture. They wrote poems that not only described what they saw in the sculptures, but also imagined thoughtful, funny, and wistful personas for these figures.
About Constructed Head No. 2 by Naum Gabo
About Running Man at 2,550,116 by Jonathan Borofsky
After sharing our poems, we looked for commonalities between the three sculptures - what is the relationship between the sculptures? All three artworks show human figures. They also all have one or more flat planes. Can you find other similarities?

We also discussed how artists sometimes enlarge a small sculpture into a larger version. For example, Pablo Picasso created a larger version of Head of a Woman (Tête de femme) out of gravel and concrete, on view in the Nasher garden. Naum Gabo first designed the Constructed Head No. 2 in 1916, which he enlarged 59 years later to the almost six-foot tall stainless steel version that is in the Nasher collection.


3rd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

4th grade

5th grade

5th grade



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