Resources
Cultural Understanding and Critical Thinking
Focus on Romare Bearden’s artwork and visual conversation
RL. KID: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Rl. IKI: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
Students will be able to:
- Identify the elements of a story
- Discuss how images and words create meaning in a text
- Write a story about an artwork
- Create a collage that tells a story
About
“You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.”
— Romare Bearden
Under Construction: Collage from The Mint Museum includes works of art by artists from other countries or eras or who have backgrounds different from those of your students. For this activity, students will look at an artwork by Romare Bearden as a visual conversation about artists who convey community, race, and culture through their art.
Although he was an accomplished painter and printmaker, Romare Bearden is best known for his masterful use of collage. Bearden used cut and torn photographs found in popular magazines as well as painted papers he made himself. He would then reassemble them into visually powerful statements on African American life. His imagery and symbols and imagery depict the hectic life of New York City and his adopted home of Harlem, memories of his North Carolina childhood home, a celebration of jazz, and blues musicians, and of African American religion and spirituality.
Romare Bearden’s work reflects on his life growing up in rural North Carolina as well as the bustling Harlem community he moved to in New York city. In this piece, we can find details in the different characters’ clothing that tells the story of a family member living in the city visiting an older loved one still living in a rural community.
Examples of Bearden’s art tells stories about urban and rural life for African-American citizens. See more of his works here: http://www.mintmuseums.org/art/exhibitions/detail/romare-bearden-southern-recollections/