Welcome to Your museum
A Resource Guide for Teachers
Goals of this Resource Guide
One goal of this guide is to help teachers prepare students to visit the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, where they will participate in a docentguided tour entitled Welcome to Your Museum. Students will see works of art
created in different times and from different places.
A second goal of the guide is to help teachers relate aspects of the tour to
their school’s curriculum.
About the Tour
Docents offer this 50 minute tour for students in grades 1–5. During the
tour students will develop their visual and verbal skills as they learn to look
at and talk about art, discovering line, shape, and color. The tour themes
are selected to engage students’ imaginations and to assist them in
discovering how art relates to their world. Welcome to Your Museum meets
state content standards for history/social science and visual arts for
grades 2-3.
About the
Museum
LACMA is the largest
encyclopedic museum in the western United
States with more than 100,000 works of art.
Through its far-reaching collections, the
museum is both a resource to and a reflection
of the many cultural communities and heritages
in Southern California. The collection includes
artworks from various cultures from the
prehistoric to the present.
Suggested classroom activities
before the museum visit
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Have students name the elements of art listed in the glossary and explain
their meanings.
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As a class identify the elements of art in the reproductions. Explain that
the museum tour will provide a similar opportunity to look for these and
other elements. A docent at the museum will discuss how the artist’s use
of the elements can help the viewer explore the meanings of artworks.
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Compare two of the artworks with the class. Ask them to identify
similarities and differences in the images.
Glossary
Color
The visual sensation dependent on the reflection or absorption of light from a given surface. Color
is made up of hue, intensity, and value.
Hue—refers to the name of the color (red, blue, yellow, orange)
Intensity—refers to the brightness or dullness of a color
Value— the lightness or darkness of a hue or neutral color
Line
One of the elements of art. Lines vary in length and direction.
Lines can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. They can describe structure or gesture, the
outline of a shape or create patterns.
Material
Artists use a variety of materials and tools to create art. Some materials are common and
inexpensive (such as clay) while others are costly (gold and jewels). Artists select their
materials to support the intention of the work.
Shape
Geometric shapes such as circles, triangles, and rectangles, or freeform shapes, appear in
many different kinds of art. They may form the underlying structure of the composition, or
define certain parts. Shapes that are repeated establish patterns.
Texture
One of the elements of art. Texture is the way a surface feels or appears to feel. Texture can
range from smooth and soft to rough and hard.
Ashurnasirpal II and a winged Deity
883–859 BCE
Iraq, Nimrud
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About the Image:
This is one panel from a series of five
Assyrian bas-reliefs from the ninth-century
that once decorated the inner walls of the
northwest palace of Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–
859 BCE). The site of ancient Calah (now
called Nimrud), located on the Tigris River in
northern Iraq, was an ancient capital of
Assyria probably founded in the thirteenth
century BC. The city was developed under the
reign of Ashurnasirpal II, who erected his
great northwest palace on earlier ruins. Built
of mud brick on stone foundations, the palace
was embellished on its lower levels with a
series of decorated slabs (from the upper
Tigris quarries) that depicted the monarch’s
skill as a hunter/warrior, as a servant of the
gods, and as a mighty king. One of the five
panels depicts the king with a learned man. In
one hand, the king holds a libation bowl; in his
other hand, he holds his bow, symbol of royal
prowess. A long inscription in cuneiform on
the reliefs has come to be known as
Ashurnasirpal’s “standard inscription”
because it was repeated so frequently
throughout the palace; it mentions the king’s
prayer and his deeds in founding the city of
Calah.
Coffin
Mid-21st
Century (About 1000–968 BCE)
Egypt, Likely Thebes
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About the Image:
This sarcophagus, or coffin is made of
sycamore wood and shaped in the form of
a human outline. The head, hands, and feet
are modeled in high relief. The figure's
plaited beard, a reference to the god Osiris,
most likely identifies it as a male's coffin.
The space in the inscription on the lid's
footboard that would have been reserved
for the name of the coffin's owner has been
left blank, leaving his identity a mystery.
The sarcophagus and the process of
mummification were central to ancient
Egyptians' beliefs about the afterlife. The
Egyptians believed that in the afterlife, the
pharaohs became one with Re and were
likewise reborn with him at sunrise. While
only the pharaohs journeyed with Re
through the nighttime hours, all Egyptians
faced the same dangers on their journey to
the afterlife. Instructions for the elaborate
preparations necessary to safe passage
from life into the afterlife were found in the
Book of the Dead. .
Round-Topped Stela
Mid-18th Dynasty,
reign of Amenhotep III, circa 1391 - 1353 BCE
About the Image:
This stela, a flat slab of stone with a
commemorative purpose, was created for
Luef-Er-Bak, who is depicted by the
figure on the right and identified by the
hieroglyphs at the top. The stela was
carved during the reign of King
Amenhotep III in the middle of the
Eighteenth Dynasty (1391-1353 B.C.E.).
This stable and prosperous period is
considered to represent the height of
ancient Egyptian artistic production. The
stela was probably made for the
necropolis (city of the dead) of Western
Thebes, where it would have been placed
in the tomb of the deceased.
Soap Bubbles
After 1739
Jean-Baptiste-Simon Chardin
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About the Image:
The painting shows a boy
leaning on a window ledge and
blowing a bubble from a reed
with absorbed concentration.
As he carefully eyes the
expanding bubble, a young
child strains to watch over the
ledge. It could well be a scene
the artist observed in his native
Paris, but the subject also
belongs to a long tradition of
European iconography, the
bubble as a symbol of the
fragility and vanity of human
life.
Centaur
1955
Pablo Picasso
About The Image:
Centaur straddles the border between
painting and sculpture. Picasso used
discarded film equipment to assemble
this mythological creature, half horse,
half man – it has a lens box for its head
and a light stand for its neck and four
legs. Picasso experimented in
combining painted forms with found
objects and manmade materials in 3-D
form and is often considered an
extension of cubist collage – today we
call this technique assemblage.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE: THE ROAD TO THE STUDIO
1980
David Hockney
About the Image:
British-born artist David Hockney's great affection for the city of Los Angeles, his home since the
1960s, is evident in the many works that draw upon its cultural iconography: luxurious swimming
pools, sun-drenched landscapes, and handsome young men at play. Painted from memory in just a
few weeks, Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio , the largest of Hockney's canvases, vividly
captures the quintessential Los Angeles activity: driving. It is a personalized panoramic map of Los
Angeles based on the artist's daily trip from his home in the Hollywood Hills to his studio on Santa
Monica Boulevard. Hockney establishes a sense of distance by alternating between detailed
renderings of objects (trees, houses, tennis courts, and power lines) that represent sections of the
landscape and more abstract planes of color or simple grids that define the outlying Studio City and
Burbank. Mulholland Drive swirls across the top of the work, moving the viewer's eye from left to
right and conveying the sense of motion and altitude that the artist experienced on the ridge road.
Follow-up Activities
After the museum visit
Postcards
Have students create postcards featuring their favorite
work or art from the tour. On one side have them draw
a picture of their chosen piece and on the reverse they
can write a letter to a friend or family member
describing the colors, shape, lines and textures and of
the object. Have students explain why they liked the
work.
Additional Images and information about objects
on your tour can be found by Visiting Collections
Online at www.lacma.org
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Stair and Fountain in the Park of a Roman Villa
Hubert Robert
Standing Warrior
Mexico, Jalisco
Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze
Tea
Henri Matisse
The Liberator
Rene Magritte
Burn, Baby, Burn
Matta
Apocalyptic Landscape
Ludwig Meidner
Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso
LACMA General Information
Please review these regulations with students before arriving at the museum.
Museum Rules
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No touching works of art including outdoor sculpture. Viewers must not come closer than 24 inches to any
work of art.
No touching walls or any parts of installations. No sitting on platforms in the galleries or gardens.
No eating, drinking, smoking, gum-chewing, excess noise, or running in the galleries.
All groups must comply with instructions or requests from docents, gallery attendants or security staff.
Teachers and chaperones must stay with the students at all times and are responsible for student behavior.
Student assignments that require note taking are not permitted during a docent tour.
Arriving at the Museum
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Plan to arrive at the museum at least 15 minutes before the tour is scheduled to begin.
The museum is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard where buses should arrive for students to disembark.
Enter the museum at the BP Grand Entrance on Wilshire Boulevard in front of Urban Light. A docent will meet
your bus when it arrives.
Buses should park on 6th Street, which is one block north of Wilshire Boulevard.
Cars may park on surrounding streets or in the pay parking lot at 6th Street.
Lunch
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Picnicking is permitted at the tables outside the Ahmanson Building, the BP Grand Entrance or in the park,
and students are welcome to bring sack lunches. Seating is not permitted in the Café or the surrounding patio.
Box lunches may be purchased from the Café. Orders must be placed one week before your arrival. Please
contact the Plaza Café (323) 857-6197.
Museum Reentry
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If you are planning to visit the galleries after your guided tour please present a copy of your confirmation letter
at the Welcome Center on the BP Grand Entrance, or the Los Angeles Times Central Court, to receive free
admission tickets. Your group may not enter the galleries until 12 noon when the museum opens to the public.
Enjoy your visit