Online Educational Units in Asian Art

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Resources Organized by Time Period: 1750-1919



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Ancestor Portraits – Family Legacy through Art
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Students will be able to investigate and explain how portraiture communicates a person’s legacy.

Go to Museum Resource: https://asia.si.edu/learn/for-educators/teaching-china-with-the-smithsonian/les...
 
The Artful Fabric of Collecting
Jordan Schnitzner Museum of Art, University of Oregon
Chinese textiles from the collection of Gertrude Bass Warner (1863-1951), who… was particularly drawn to silk textiles and the people who produced them, primarily the women in private households and commercial workshops. Techniques and patterns of weaving silk for Chinese robes are demonstrated on the site. It was only in the 17th century when the production of court orders began to overwhelm the imperial workshops that commercial workshops took over some of the production. In these commercial workshops, most of them located in the Jiangnan area, the center of China’s silk production, male weavers relegated women to the groundworks of silk production: the rearing of the silkworms and reeling the silk of the cocoons. Embroidery remained the domain of women. They were the master embroiderers who developed the art to its height in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Their legacy can be admired in the textiles from the Warner collection.

Go to Museum Resource: https://glam.uoregon.edu/s/fabric-of-collecting/page/welcome
 
Asian Influences on European Art
Getty Museum
Explore with your class Asian influences on European art in the 18th century in this lesson plan. Discover ways to engage your students in the investigation of chinoiserie, the cultural and artistic trend that produced objects and paintings reflecting Chinese subjects and motifs. In its broadest sense, chinoiserie was meant to evoke the spirit and decorative forms of faraway lands as diverse as China, Japan, India, and the Middle East.

Go to Museum Resource: http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/asian_inf...
 
Ch'ing (Qing), 1644-1912
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
"The last Chinese dynasty began on a positive note -- of energetic collecting, cataloging, and exporting -- but ended disastrously." A brief, one-paragraph overview, along with a map, a video clip featuring an MIA curator, and 445 objects from the period.

Go to Museum Resource: http://archive.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/history/dynasty-ching.cfm
 
China’s Long Nineteenth Century – Foreign Influence and the End of Dynastic China
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Students will be able to explain the various reasons why the Qing dynasty was weakened during the nineteenth century, especially with regard to the outside influence of foreign powers.

Go to Museum Resource: https://asia.si.edu/learn/for-educators/teaching-china-with-the-smithsonian/les...
 
China’s ‘China’: Porcelain’s Contribution to World History and Culture
China Institute
A simple and clear-cut way of demonstrating the significant impact that Chinese porcelain has had on global material culture over many centuries is to consider the very word ‘China’ in the English language: the word refers not only to the country but is also synonymous with the porcelain pottery ware that began to circulate in Europe almost as soon as European ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope and increasingly established direct trade relations with China and other Asian countries. Ceramic pottery is, of course, as old as human civilization and found around the globe; but the unique quality and properties of porcelain—its considerable strength, translucency, and high resistance to thermal shock—make it one of the great contributions Chinese civilization has made to world cultures.

Go to Museum Resource: https://china360online.org/?property=appreciation-capitals
 
Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion [PDF]
Chinese Historical Society of America
Curriculum materials to accompany the New York Historical Society 2015 exhibition, “Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion” that explores the complex history of Chinese Americans. The exhibition’s title encapsulates the challenges of immigration, citizenship, and belonging that shaped both the Chinese American experience and the development of the United States as a nation.

Go to Museum Resource: https://chsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Chinese-American-Classroom-Material...
 
Chinese and American Painting: Compare Two Cultures in Ink Painting [PDF]
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
In this lesson plan Students will create a Chinese style landscape from a detail of Mirror Lake.

Go to Museum Resource: https://content.sbma.net/education/lessonPlans/pdf/29Mirror%20Lake%20Bierstadt%...
 
Chinese Art: Paintings Influenced by the Poet Du Fu [PDF]
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Lesson Plan; Art Activity

Go to Museum Resource: https://content.sbma.net/education/lessonPlans/pdf/29%20Looking_to_the_Past_Poe...
 
Chinese Jades of the Qing Dynasty [PDF]
Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida
Collector fashions during the 18th century called for jade boulders to be left in their natural shapes and carved with landscape and figural designs. Similar to paintings, these boulders represented miniature worlds that could stimulate the scholar's imagination or provide a kind of mental retreat. Lesson plan.

Go to Museum Resource: http://harn.ufl.edu/linkedfiles/k-12resource-chinesejades.pdf
 
Designing with Numbers
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Students will look closely at a Qing dynasty court robe known as a chaofu. They will learn about the beliefs in Chinese numerology and its relationship to language. After counting the symbols, they will learn why specific numbers of special images appear on the robe. Several related math problems are included.

Go to Museum Resource: https://asia.si.edu/learn/for-educators/teaching-china-with-the-smithsonian/les...
 
Diving Deeper into Buddhism – Guanyin
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Students who are already familiar with Siddhartha Gautama, or Shakyamuni, the Historical Buddha, will deepen their understanding of Buddhist beliefs and artwork. They will analyze and interpret works of art that reveal how people live around the world and what they value. They will identify how works of art reflect times, places, cultures, and beliefs.

Go to Museum Resource: https://asia.si.edu/learn/for-educators/teaching-china-with-the-smithsonian/les...
 
Exploring Chinese Painting: A Test Module for Undergraduate Teaching
Columbia University, Media Center for Art History
A workspace allowing students to view and compare a group of important Chinese hand scrolls and hanging scrolls from the 10th to the 17th centuries. Uses Flash.

Go to Museum Resource: http://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/nehasian/zoomify/scrolls/swf/start.html
 
The Forbidden City (Imperial Palace of China)
The Palace Museum, Beijing
Provides an annotated map of the Palace with live links to images and background on each of the locations. The Imperial Palace was “the center of imperial governance and family life, the Forbidden City consists of various structures that were designed for specific functions. Each structure was built in accordance with the traditional Chinese architectural hierarchy and designed to reflect imperial power and authority.”

Go to Museum Resource: https://en.dpm.org.cn/collections/architecture/
 
Imperial Silks (of the Manchu Court)
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
"When the nomadic Manchu warriors overthrew the Ming dynasty in 1644 and founded Ch'ing [Qing], they took over the world's largest population, greatest bureaucracy, and one of the most luxurious courts in existence. They remained, however, a clear minority... To ease an orderly political transition while guarding against total cultural assimilation, the Manchus adjusted to a Chinese style bureaucracy and adopted the Buddhist religion while simultaneously enforcing certain ethnic and cultural differences. One of the clearest distinctions made was that of court attire." An overview, plus 14 related examples of court attire from the Manchu period, all with descriptions.

Go to Museum Resource: http://archive.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/explore/explore-collection-imperial-silk...
 
The Influence of East Asian Lacquer on European Furniture
Victoria and Albert Museum
When lacquered objects made in East Asia first reached Europe in about the early 16th century, they were highly prized for their flawless finish and light-reflecting qualities. Lacquer became available to European elites, along with other luxury items including silk and porcelain, once Portuguese explorers discovered a sea route to the East around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. The flow of goods increased in the early 17th century when the Dutch and English East India Companies began to bring goods to markets in Amsterdam and London. By 1700 many European country houses and palaces contained examples of East Asian export lacquer. Asian lacquer was admired as a precious and mysterious material.

Go to Museum Resource: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/east-asian-lacquer-influence
 
Lesson Plan: The Silk Road [PDF]
The Art Institute of Chicago
Grades 7–10 English Language Arts, Social Science. See also The Silk Road History Lab.

Go to Museum Resource: https://www.artic.edu/assets/43d01149-b415-2110-9102-f39931e27c7f
 
Mount Fuji
The Cleveland Museum of Art
The purpose of this lesson is to consider the cultural and religious significance of Mount Fuji, a recurring theme in Japanese art.

Go to Museum Resource: http://www.clevelandart.org/lesson-plan-packet/mount-fuji
 
Playing with Shadows: An Introduction to Shadow Puppetry
The Kennedy Center, ArtsEdge
"Discover the secrets behind the art of shadow puppetry in this multimedia exploration, designed for grades 5-8, which explores this age-old art form through animations, videos, interactive activities, and more." With questions for discussion and two related lesson plans (see left-hand column): "Puppets on the Move: China and the Silk Road" and "Shadows & Light, Science & Puppetry." Uses Flash.

Go to Museum Resource: https://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/multimedia/series/AEMicrosites/playing-with...
 
Porcelain and Trade Economics
The Cleveland Museum of Art
This lesson plan explores why wealthy Europeans wanted Asian luxury goods, like porcelain, and how they obtained these goods through import.

Go to Museum Resource: http://www.clevelandart.org/lesson-plan-packet/porcelain-and-trade-economics
 
Rank and Style: Power Dressing in Imperial China
Pacific Asia Museum of USC
"Rank and Style: Power Dressing in Imperial China is an educational and interactive exploration of how the Chinese elite in the Ming and Qing dynasties expressed status through insignia of rank and the robes and accessories that went with them. It draws on the extensive collections of the Pacific Asia Museum as well as several private collections." Includes a glossary of textile terms and symbols, a chronology, discussion questions, and a reading list. Teaching Unit at the link below. See also Introduction.

Go to Museum Resource: https://pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu/exhibitions/past/exhibitions-at-usc-pam-prior...
 
Recording the Grandeur of the Qing
Columbia University, Asia for Educators
This interactive teaching unit gives the viewer unprecedented access to four monumental artworks of the Qing period – four of the twenty-four southern inspection tour scrolls commissioned by the Qing emperors Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) and Qianlong (r. 1736-1795). Each of the four featured scrolls is displayed online in its entirety, with key details annotated by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Maxwell K. Hearn. Five background essays by Dr. Hearn and Columbia history professor Madeleine Zelin serve as guides to the historical and artistic context in which the scrolls were created. Produced in cooperation with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Go to Museum Resource: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/qing/index.html
 
Rise & Fall of the Canton Trade System
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Visualizing Cultures
"The images in this unit portray the abundant variety of commercial, art, and craft goods exchanged in the Canton region during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Three cities became the center of the trading system that linked China to the Western European powers and the United States. Macau, the oldest, stayed under Portuguese control from 1557 to 1999. Canton gathered traders from Europe, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and the rest of China. Hong Kong, acquired by the British after the Opium War, grew from a small fishing village to a major international port during the 19th century." With three in-depth essays by Peter C. Perdue, professor of history at Yale, plus an extensive image gallery and a curriculum guide.

Go to Museum Resource: http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/rise_fall_canton_01/index.html
 
The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 in Woodblock Prints from China and Japan
The British Library
Produced in conjunction with theJapan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), this web exhibition “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: as seen in prints and archives” has been produced as a collaboration between the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) and the British Library. Its aim is to bring together the collection of prints of the Sino-Japanese War held by the British Library and documents made public by JACAR to show how the events of the Sino-Japanese War were depicted and recorded by the people of the time. Both the Japanese and the Chinese prints included in this special web exhibition were produced at the time of the Sino-Japanese War to show the people of their respective countries what the war was like, a role played nowadays by news photographs. Therefore each country had a tendency to portray its own soldiers as strong and brave, but those of the opposing country as weak and small. Moreover many of the depictions seem to be based not on actual observation of the locations or events but on hearsay. Indeed some of them show scenes which could not have happened. From this it is clearly evident that these works were intended as propaganda at the time.

Go to Museum Resource: https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/jacarbl-fsjwar-e/index.html
 
Teacher’s Sourcebook for Chinese Art and Culture [PDF]
Peabody Essex Museum
Provides an excellent introduction to Chinese history and religions along with a section on “Chinese Porcelain in World Trade History.”

Go to Museum Resource: https://s3.amazonaws.com/pem-org/general/pdf/China_teachers_sourcebook_PEM.pdf
 
Theater in China and Japan
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Students will explore then compare and contrast the Chinese (Beijing Opera) and Japanese (Kabuki) forms of theater.

Go to Museum Resource: http://www.clevelandart.org/lesson-plan-packet/theater-china-and-japan
 
Throwing Off Asia II: Woodblock Prints of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Visualizing Cultures
"The 'Westernization' of Japan included strengthening the military and engaging in major wars against both China and Tsarist Russia. These remarkable propaganda prints illustrate Japan's startling victory in the Sino-Japanese War." See the ESSAY section for an in-depth, illustrated reading of the images from the historical record. See the VISUAL NARRATIVES section for a shorthand view of the unit's primary themes and images. A CURRICULUM section for teachers and students can be found under the "Throwing Off Asia II" menu at the top of the page.

Go to Museum Resource: http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/throwing_off_asia_02/index.html
 
Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia
The British Library
Trading Places "follows the journey of one of the biggest multinationals in history -- the East India Company." Includes a company timeline and "fact file," as well as extensive information on the history of the company and its activities in Asia. Also includes an in-depth look at the history of Bombay. With maps and images throughout. Asia used to be known as 'The East Indies.' Pepper, spices, medicinal drugs, aromatic woods, perfumes and silks were rare commodities in Europe, and therefore valuable. Trading in them could make you a fortune. And for this chance many were willing to risk their lives. There were three great empires in Asia: the Ottoman Turkish; the Mughal; the Chinese. Each was wealthy and sophisticated and had its own international trading network. How could Europe open up its own trading routes to Asia?"

Go to Museum Resource: http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/trading/tradingplaces.html
 
Work of Giants: The Chinese and the Building of the First Transcontinental Railroad
Chinese Historical Society of America
Museum unit memorializing the efforts of the 12,000 Chinese laborers who worked on the Central Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. The involvement of Chinese workers in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad is common knowledge. We hope to present information that enhances the basic facts–that the Chinese railroad workers were the backbone of the enormous construction project to carve a road through granite of the Sierra Nevada, ever diligent and efficient, adapting to new construction techniques, and enduring harsh working and living conditions, which all resulted in the completion of the railroad ahead of schedule. The Transcontinental Railroad is an American legacy, a triumph of the human spirit and a cornerstone of the history of Chinese in America.

Go to Museum Resource: https://chsa.org/exhibits/online-exhibits/work-of-giants-the-chinese-and-the-bu...
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