Junior Docent School Program - Milwaukee Art Museum

Year 2 (4 th grade): People, Culture, and History
Theme: Connect
Three tours:
Portraiture
o Students explore types of portraiture and learn how to analyze a portrait
using the elements of art, depicted imagery, and historical and cultural
context.
Wisconsin History
o Students investigate Wisconsin history through works of art.
World Communities
o Students investigate western (European and American) and non-western
(Haitian, Asian, and African) art depicting and/or representing everyday
life.
Tour: Portraiture
Background
The definition of a portrait for this tour is a work of art that represents or symbolizes a
specific person, a group of people, or an animal. Portraits can be executed in any
medium and in either a two-dimensional or three-dimensional format. Portraits usually
show what a person or animal looks like as well as revealing something about the
subject‟s personality. A portrait often tells us about what was important to society at the
time it was made; much of what we know about people who lived before the 1850s is
available to us only through portraits.
Portraits can include only the head of the subject, or they can depict the shoulders and
head, the upper torso, or an entire figure shown either seated or standing. Portraits can
show individuals either self-consciously posing in ways that convey a sense of
timelessness or captured in the midst of work or daily activity. During some historical
periods, portraits were severe and emphasized authority, and during other periods
artists worked to communicate spontaneity and the sensation of life.
Objectives
Students will be able to identify portraits and discuss the different ways in which
a person, a group of people, or an animal can be portrayed in two-dimensional
and three-dimensional formats.
Students will discuss cultural influences and historical elements that a portrait
reveals.
Students will identify the elements of art used by an artist in creating a portrait.
Students will be able to list at least two functions of a portrait throughout art
history:
- to document physical resemblance of the subject
- to convey status and/or acknowledge power and wealth
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JDSP – Docent Packet
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