Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to become aware of works of art from different communities, times and places, such as famous buildings and decorated objects. The museum offers one building and one bowl; your class brings the buildings, comics and crafts it knows from pictures and from life. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- D3.2 demonstrate an awareness of a variety of works of art from diverse communities, times, and places […]
2 The lesson
Where and when was it made?
Look at a work of art and ask where it comes from and roughly when it was made. Ask what clues in the picture tell you.
What is shown, and who might have used it?
Name what you see in the work. Ask who might have lived with it or used it, and what they might have liked about it.
Go deeper
Picture a very big building beside a river. The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum in Agra, built by Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal 2. Its walls are brick, covered with white marble that has stones set into it 3. It stands at the edge of its garden, above the Yamuna river 4. The museum also holds a turquoise bowl from Iran that shows a lute player and his companion 5.
Think about it
Shah Jahan had the Taj Mahal built for his wife. If you made something big for a person you love, what would you make it from, and why?
Into the museum
- Taj Mahal: who had it built, and what its walls are made of.
- Turquoise Bowl with Lute Player: a bowl from Iran with a lute player and his companion on it.
Try this
Read the card on the Taj Mahal and the card on the Turquoise Bowl with Lute Player. Draw one of them, then tell a partner where it comes from and one thing you noticed.
3 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Taj Mahal have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A famous building in Agra. The record describes the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum in Agra built by Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz Mahal between 1632 and 1653, with a white marble dome above the Yamuna river, calligraphy and white marble inlay. Which parts of a famous building would you draw first?
In your own words: what does Turquoise Bowl with Lute Player have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A bowl with a lute player. The record describes a turquoise ceramic bowl showing a lute player and his companion, from Iran in the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Look at the picture on the bowl. What do the two figures seem to be doing?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: The Arts
- 2. Wikidata
- 3. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes, vol. 10 p. 69
- 4. John Brookes, Gardens of Paradise: The History and Design of the Great Islamic Gardens (London, 1987), p.154
- 5. Metropolitan Museum Open Access