Art At-A-Glance

Objective: Students gain an appreciation and understanding of art and culture, and build language skills by reading; developing scripts; making choices about gesture, voice, and expression; and performing traditional stories alongside art objects in the Asian Art Museum’s collection galleries.

Objective: Observe and discuss how artist Santiago Bose uses cultural symbols and artistic methods as post-colonial critique. Create an assemblage using found objects that conveys your personal identity. Interview a family member to uncover a photograph or symbol that recalls your heritage and include this in your assemblage. Then, write a first person narrative telling a story about your assemblage.

Objective: Students will summarize and illustrate the main events of a folktale from Japan in the format of kamishibai slides and retell their stories using their kamishibai slides.

The Ramayana, the epic story of Prince Rama, recounts his trials as he tries to rescue his wife, Sita. This statue depicts the antagonist, Ravana (Balinese: Rawana), on his mount, the bird-like Wilmana (Balinese: Vimana). The demon king kidnaps Sita, taking her to his island kingdom of Langka. Uniquely, in the Indonesian version of this Hindu story Ravana rides his mount instead of a chariot when he kidnaps Sita.

Objective: In groups, students will discuss how artists communicate events and characters by observing and describing scenes in the scroll containing stories of Rama’s youth. Students will compare the context of this scroll’s use with those of scrolls illustrating other epics. Then they will create a biographical scroll from the perspective of a character in the Ramayana (The Life of Rama).