These tours are intended for middle and high school students, and are designed to encourage the examination of objects and ideas through a variety of activities including discussions, worksheets, and small group work. Expect to visit approximately four to six galleries during your tour. Due to travel time within the Museum, the actual time spent in the galleries is 50 minutes or 1 hour and 20 minutes, depending upon the lesson chosen.

For details on the correlations between Museum lessons and the national standards for grades 4–12, click here.

Introductory Lessons

These lessons are ideal for a first visit or for a general introduction to broad aspects of the collections.

• Learning to Look (grades 4–6)

  How can students learn to see more when they look at art? In this lesson, students explore the Museum's collections through activities and discussions focused on new ways of viewing, thinking about, and responding to works of art.

• Around the World (grades 4–8)

  How does art differ from one culture to another? In this lesson, students are asked to compare the art of many diverse cultures and then complete their own around-the-world travel log.

• Introduction to the Museum (grades 7–12)

  This overview of the Museum's collections includes an introduction to ways of examining and interpreting works of art from many times and places.

• Painters and Paintings

  Why do painters make the choices they do? How do they create their illusions or abstractions? This lesson explores changing styles in painting and audience reactions to them. Special emphasis can be placed on painters currently being studied.

• Introduction to Sculpture

  What is sculpture? What artistic choices must sculptors make? This lesson introduces the methods and materials of three-dimensional art from around the world.

• Introduction to Ceramics

  Clay has been used by many different cultures over thousands of years to produce useful and decorative objects. During this lesson, students explore the Museum's collections to learn about different styles, building techniques, and uses of ceramics.

• Introduction to Architecture

  What is architecture? This lesson focuses on the Museum's outstanding collection of period rooms and architectural elements from around the world. Beginning with the Museum building itself, students explore different styles, materials, building methods, and functions of architecture.

Subject-Area Lessons

These lessons are designed to relate to classroom studies. If you do not see a lesson that connects with your studies, the Department of Education staff would be happy to work with you to design a lesson that supports your curriculum.

• American Art: From Colony to Nation

  What was art like in George Washington's day? Students examine furniture and paintings, discuss styles and techniques, and explore what art can tell us about life in the colonial and Federal periods.

• Survey of American Art

  What are the important themes in American art? How are changes in American society reflected in its art? This lesson surveys the art in the Museum's American collections from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries.

• Pennsylvania Artists

  What do Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Eakins, Horace Pippin, and Alexander Calder have in common? They are all artists who called Pennsylvania their home. This lesson introduces students to artists who were born or worked in Pennsylvania from colonial times to today.

• Greek and Roman Mythology in Art

  Beginning with the Museum building, students explore the ways in which artists have interpreted the ideas and mythology of the classical world throughout the ages.

• Medieval Art

  What can the architecture, sculpture, textiles, and armor of medieval Europe tell us about life in the Middle Ages? This lesson explores stylistic changes in medieval art and how they reveal an evolving society.

• Arms and Armor

  Who used arms and armor? How were they made? This exploration of the Museum's collection of Renaissance armor even includes the handling of some objects.

• Art of the Renaissance

  How did the art of the Renaissance reflect the ideas of that time? Students examine works of art from both Italy and northern Europe to learn more about the art and beliefs of the day.

• Medieval and Renaissance Art

  A combination of two lessons, Medieval Art and Art of the Renaissance (see descriptions above), this offering is designed for classes studying both periods of European history.

• Renaissance to Modern

  This lesson provides a chronological look at European and American artistic styles from the Renaissance to today. Students consider the strengths and challenges of each period and evaluate their own reactions to each style.

• Art and Math

  Students explore how artists from different eras and cultures used mathematical concepts in their art. The content of this lesson is adjusted to fit the grade level of each class. Possible topics include pattern, symmetry, one-point perspective, and number series.

• Art and Language Arts

  How do you read a work of art? How do you write a work of art? During this lesson, students uncover the "stories" told by objects in the Museum's collections as they experiment with the different tools that writers and artists use to make an engaging work. Activities encourage careful observation, analysis and discussion of works of art, and creative and descriptive writing. An expanded version of this lesson, Focus on Art and Literacy, is available to Philadelphia public school 4th grades.

• The Impressionist Era (1 hour)

  What made the art of the Impressionists so different? This lesson introduces students to the works of Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and others, and places them within the context of their time.

• Modern and Contemporary Art

  What is modern art and what makes it look the way it does? This lesson explores changing styles and ideas in European and American art from Impressionism to Cubism to the contemporary art of today.

• Islamic Art (1 hour)

  How does Islamic art reflect the ideas of its culture? In this lesson, students examine carpets, tiles, architecture, and other objects from the Middle East, Europe, and Asia to learn about Islamic art, beliefs, and cross-cultural influences.

• Art of Asia

  In this lesson, students examine and compare the art of India, China, Japan, and Korea. Highlights include an Indian Hindu temple, a Chinese palace hall, and a Japanese teahouse and garden. Classes can explore all four cultures or focus on a specific one.

• The Mixed-Up Files (grades 4–8)

  In this companion tour to the book The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, students learn about the Museum and its collections as they explore popular galleries and mysterious objects.

• Chasing Vermeer (grades 5–8)

  This tour, designed to complement the book Chasing Vermeer by Blue Bailliett, introduces students to Dutch painters in the Museum's collection working at the same time as Vermeer and to scientific issues of conservation and authentication that are written about in the book.

• The Artist and Society (grades 9–12)

  What does art reflect about the time in which it was created? In this lesson, students examine how artists have chronicled, commented upon, and criticized their societies.

• Treasures of French, German, or Spanish Art (grades 9–12) (1 hour)

  In this lesson, students studying French, German, or Spanish as a foreign language are able to learn about the art of that culture. Tours range from Medieval religious objects to contemporary paintings and sculpture.

• Drawing and Discovering (grades 5–12)

  How does drawing aid our understanding of art? In this lesson, students explore the Museum's collections of sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts through drawing activities and discussions led by a Museum teacher/artist. Special emphasis can be placed on a particular drawing technique, style, or time period currently being studied.
  This lesson has limited availability and is only offered after 11:30 a.m.

• Chemistry of Metallic Art (grades 9–12)

  This 3-hour workshop is being offered on Tuesdays throughout the 2007 academic year to high school chemistry classes as a field trip to the Museum. The field trip includes:
  • Interactive gallery tour
  • Hands-on laboratory activities
  • Free bus transportation to Museum ($150 value)
  • Free student admission
  • Chemical Concepts: RedOx Reactions,
    Activity Series, Electrochemistry
    PA State 3.4.10-12 A, B
    NJ State 5.6. A4-8, B1

• Multiple-Visit Programs (grades K–12)

  These programs offer an opportunity to explore one or several of the Museum's collections in greater depth. You and a Museum educator will work together to create a two-, three-, or four-visit program that connects to your curriculum. Your class will work with the same Museum teacher on each visit. Past topics have included "An Introduction to Art," "The Middle Ages," "Art and Curriculum Connections," and "Art from Around the World." Students pay regular school admission fees for each visit.

Other Museum Sites

These lessons take place at other sites administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

• Rodin Museum




• The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin

  The Rodin Museum, also located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, houses the largest number of works by this nineteenth-century sculptor outside Paris. Guided and self-guided visits to this extraordinary collection are available.




• Fairmount Park Houses

  1 1/2 hour programs




• Colonial Life at Cedar Grove (grades 3–6)

  In the summer months, Cedar Grove was home to Elizabeth Coates Paschall and her nine children. What was life like in a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker family during the mid-1700s? Students participate in a variety of hands-on activities as they learn about the everyday life of children and adults just after the American Revolution.

• Captain John Macpherson's Eighteenth-Century Mansion, Mount Pleasant (grades 5–12)

  Recently restored, with a new roof, and temporarily empty of furnishings, Mount Pleasant is an excellent laboratory for the study of colonial architecture. Tour activities include looking at primary documents, sketching decorative details, and making perspective drawings. By exploring and examining the building itself, students learn how houses were designed and built in eighteeneth-century America and how architecture alone can communicate lifestyle.

For more information, please contact Education: School & Teacher Programs by phone at (215) 684-7333, by fax at (215) 236-4063, or by e-mail at .