Resources for Educators

Additional Information for Viewers

This page, which contains curatorial essays, additional information about the artists and works on view, reproductions of images, and questions for looking and discussion, is produced as a viewer supplement to the MoCP’s current exhibitions and collections. For more resources (as PDF docs), see “resources for download” below.

MRK Palash (Bangladesh, 1980), Liberation War 1971, Bangladesh,, 2010

CURRENT EXHIBITION: Survival Techniques: Narratives of Resistance

Questions for Looking and Discussion

1. What types of “resistance” do you find throughout this exhibition? What other “survival techniques” are addressed in this show?

2. What is the role of point of view in the works presented in this exhibition?
• From whose point of view is each story told?
• In what ways are the stories told here objective or subjective—personal? Which are told from a communal point of view?
• How do these perspectives affect your understanding of the political and social issues addressed in each artwork?
• In what ways are you able to connect to each story—are any of the themes universal? Are there aspects of the story you feel you can’t connect with? Why?

3. Most of the works in this exhibition reference actual histories, events, or geographies but many include elements that were created for the camera.
• In what ways are these works “truthful?”
• How are they fictional? Where is the line?

4. What role does time and history play in each work on view? What strategies do these artists use to connect past, present, and future?

5. In what ways do works in this exhibition connect identity to the negotiation of borders and boundaries? What types of borders and boundaries do these artists consider?

6. What boundaries does technology enable us to traverse?

7. Looking at the works on the first floor, how does the darkened gallery and installation of the videos influence your experience of these works? Why might a curator choose to assemble an exhibition this way?

Resources for download (PDF docs):

“Questions for Looking”

“About the Exhibition and Works on View”

Images from Survival Techniques

Survival Techniques: Related Maps

TOURS

To schedule a free docent-led exhibition tour, contact Allison Grant at agrant@colum.edu.

PAST EXHIBITIONS (download Educators’ Resource Packets as PDFs)

Crime Unseen
Guy Tillim: Avenue Patrice Lumumba
La Frontera
Sarah Pickering: Incident Control and Geissler/Sann: the real estate
50% Grey and Recent Acquisitions of Czech Photography from The Baruch Foundation
Michael Wolf: The Transparent City and Work/Place
On The Road: Dave Anderson: Rough Beauty; Farm Security Administration; Dorothea Lange

FRAMING IDEAS: Interdisciplinary Curriculum across Genres of American Photography

Introduction: Visual Literacy

Robert Frank, San Francisco, 1956; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alan Koppel

Part 1: Street Photography

Dawoud Bey, Sharmaine, Vicente, Joseph, Andre, and Charlie, 1993; From the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Gift of the Artist

Part 2: Portraiture and Representation

O. Winston Link, NW 1345 - Ghost Town, Stanley, Virginia, January 31, 1957

Part 3: Landscape and Place

Ken Josephson, Chicago, 1961

Part 4: The Photographers of the New Bauhaus: An Expanded Vision

SAMPLE CURRICULUM

Still Life As Portrait: Looking at Gratitude: What Have You Done For Me Lately?

The New Bauhaus Workshop:
Getting to the Essence in Writing and Photography

Still Life as Portrait: I am the Object (Writing Activity: Creating Portrait Poems)

Documentary Photography: Every Picture Tells a Story

The exhibitions, presentations and related programs of the MoCP are sponsored in part by After School Matters; the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; the Illinois Arts Council, a State agency; the National Endowment for the Arts; U.S. Bank; American Airlines, the official airlines of the MoCP, and our members.