Byram Hills Central School District

This information has been taken directly from the Accelerate U - Standards and Resource Guides (with approval) from the K-12 Education, NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT site. No information in this document has been changed.

Standard 4: Understanding the Cultural Dimensions and Contributions of the Arts

4. Students will explore art and artifacts from various historical periods and world cultures to discover the roles that art plays in the lives of people of a given time and place and to understand how the time and place influence the visual characteristics of the art work. Students will explore art to understand the social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of human society.

In addition to the General Education performance indicators, students:

present a body of work within their portfolio that reflects the influences of variety of cultural styles (a)
interpret the meaning of works and artifacts in terms of the cultures that produced them (b)
explain how cultural values have been expressed in the visual arts, how art works have been used to bring about cultural change and how the art of a culture has been influenced by art works coming from outside that culture (c).

This is evident, for example, when students:

write a short research paper exploring how the depictions of war in The Third of May by Goya and Napoleon On The Battlefield at Eylau by Gros differ one from another
discuss the influence of African art on Picasso's Demoiselles D'Avignon
look at the body of work in their portfolios and describe what they consider to be their style and indicate what has influenced that style.

compare the work of regionalist artists who documented life of the ordinary people in a given place; such as Thomas Hart Benton, John Stuart Curry, and Grant Wood with the Harlem Renaissance artists like William H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Aaron Douglas, and Romare Bearden.