Understanding History and Society through Images, 1776-1914

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 14.01.10

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Introduction
  2. School Details
  3. Strategies
  4. Background Information
  5. Specific sculptures
  6. Contemporary artists
  7. Classroom activities
  8. Bibliography
  9. Notes

Making Art against the Odds: The Triumph of Edmonia Lewis

Kimberly Kellog Towne

Published September 2014

Tools for this Unit:

Strategies

I approach my art curriculum in terms of the Eight Human Commonalities expressed by Ernest Boyer. This will work will with the new IB curriculum guide. Exploring how people, from different times and cultures, have dealt with an idea gives students an opportunity to not only to see the similarities and the connectedness of being human but also to allow them to begin to understand and appreciate the cultural reasons that make people different. Hopefully, this will elicit a respect and understanding of diversity as well as a greater appreciation and affinity for history and various cultures. When the students approach an idea from the perspective of human commonalities, I hope that they will be able to take the idea and apply it to their own life and own experiences, thus making the unit personally relevant. Looking at personal identity and historical and cultural contexts fits well into this concept of human commonalities.

By using these universal commonalties as a focus of instruction, students should become able to see that their learning is vital and is part of something significant, important and relevant. They will see how all humans deal with the same issues and how they themselves must deal with these issues. By looking at the common ground that the students and individuals from other cultures or time periods have shared, hopefully will generate a deeper understanding and appreciation for the students' common bonds with them. Students need, in the world of increasingly global implications, to be able to see their own personal needs, values, beliefs, and experiences in relation to those of diverse people throughout the world and throughout time. Edmonia Lewis is a wonderful example of how an artist deals with multiple challenging issues and therefore is an exemplary role model for my students.

I will explore and employ some strategies for looking at art that I typically don't use and compare them to some of the strategies I use frequently. I often use the Feldman method of art criticism where students describe, analyze, interpret and judge a work of art and the technique of comparing and contrasting two works. I am also going to use a method with which I was familiar but had not used before, Visual Thinking Strategies. I am also going to use a method that I learned about during my research, Connotations and Denotations. I feel that by encouraging the students to really look at the four images by Edmonia Lewis, they will be able to become engaged in her work and begin to draw conclusions even before we go over the history.

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) 4

This strategy uses three broad questions to organize the looking and analyzing of artwork. It is designed to create discussion and to have students' ideas and interpretations to be based on what they actually see (the evidence in the artwork). The questions are as follows:

  1. What's going on in the picture?
  2. What do you see that makes you say that?
  3. What more can we find?

Connotations and Denotations 5

This strategy is designed to help students look at work long and to help them gather evidence to help form an interpretation of the piece. First the students list everything the see (denotations as then what these visuals might mean (connotations). It requires than any interpretation is based on evidence in the artwork. Originally used to help understand text, it is a useful tool for helping to understand artwork.

Compare and contrast

In using this strategy, I show the students two pieces of art and have them compare and contrast, often using a graphic organizer like a Venn Diagram. I frequently make it a game and have them work in groups, competing to see which group can find the most similarities and differences. They are to focus on what they see and then afterwards, using their notes, we have a group discussion on what the works might mean.

Feldman Method

The Feldman Method of art criticism has been around since before I started teaching. It is so commonplace that I don't think teachers even use the name but just the strategies. There are four steps: description-what can you see in the work of art, analysis-what are the relationships between things in the work of art, interpretations-what do you think all of this means and Judgment- what is the evaluation of the work of art based of the first three steps. I often use graphic organizers to help students with this.

Comments:

Marilyn Richardson

November 15, 2016 at 4:27 pm

More Info About Edmonia Lewis

Google: Edmonia Lewis, Marilyn Richardson for more information on Lewis's life, career, and sculpture

Kirsten Pai Buick

October 28, 2022 at 8:42 pm

oversimplification of my argument

I read this with great pleasure and interest. I think that this is a wonderful way to introduce students to Lewis’s work and to inspire other curiosities and a true model for exploration. However, my work on Lewis is vastly oversimplified. Of course her identity played a role in her work. She referenced it all the time—whether it was through Longfellow or her Catholicism or her figures based on enslavement, the Bible, history, etc. But those “identifications” (a more fluid way of understanding the seeming coherence of “identity”) are based on distances—Longfellow in lieu of direct references to her childhood; enslaved people though she was never enslaved. Lewis manipulated those identities that people could only narrowly comprehend. The author states: “This book, which began as a dissertation, argues that her work is more a reflection of the time period than her personal identity. Despite this being the most recent published work, I am not going to focus on the author's point of view. While certainly Edmonia Lewis' art was reflective of the context in which she was working, one cannot discount the impact her personal identity had on her subject choice and her work.” I was not arguing that her context was more important than her personal identity. My point was that her “personal identity” was never revealed by her. She used her deep understanding of context to make her dreams come true despite the limitations that the era set for her.

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