Teaching pages provide analysis of a selection of works of art on view at the Museum, biographical information on featured artists, discussion questions, and links to additional resources. Teaching pages are prepared by MMoCA’s education department as an introduction to a museum visit by school groups.
The Art Depression Bread Line The large sculpture Depression Bread Line by George Segal portrays the experience of many urban Americans who suffered from hunger during the 1930s Great Depression. During this difficult period, which affected the whole world, economies…
Kenneth Josephson
The Art New York State, 1970 Photographs are generally assumed to be depictions of the real world, especially if their content is made up of familiar objects in recognizable relationship…
Leopoldo Méndez
The Art Pequeña maestro, ¡qué inmensa es su voluntad!/Little school teacher, how great is your will! This relief print, created as a backdrop for the opening and closing credits of…
Lorie Novak
The Art Self Portrait (Ellis Island) This ghostly photograph by Lorie Novak is named Self Portrait (Ellis Island), an unusual juxtaposition of words for a title. The title suggests that…
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
The Art Retrato de lo eterno/Portrait of the eternal Lush contrasts of dark and light draw the viewer close to this timeless scene of a woman gazing into a mirror.…
Karl Wirsum
The Art Measle Mouse Quarantined From His Fans This little wood figure has red spots on his face, neck, hands, feet, and on his round mouse ears. Even though Measle…
Martin Kersels
The Art Tossing a Friend (Melinda) (1, 2, and 3) In each photograph in Tossing a Friend (Melinda) (1, 2, and 3) , one sees a petite woman in a…
Nancy Mladenoff
The Art Cityscape Moonlight falls on the rooftops and lawns of a suburban neighborhood, adjacent to an urban center. Most of the residents appear to be asleep, and noisy cars…
Juan Sánchez
The Art Un Sueño Libre Juan Sánchez photographed this “moment in the street” when his friends’ children paused with their flowers and bicycle. The girls in front are smiling openly;…
Neil Welliver
The Art Prospect Stream Water courses through a clearing in a lush forest of birch and evergreen trees. A bright, clear day in summer is suggested by the strong contrast…
Paul Shambroom
The Art Dassel City Council Paul Shambroom’s panoramic photograph has the appearance of a seventeenth-century Dutch painting of civic leaders. It is large, thirty-three inches high and sixty-six inches wide.…
Philip Hanson
The Art Mezzanine Philip Hanson’s Mezzanine beckons us into a richly colored architectural space while simultaneously preventing us from knowing where the space leads or what lies at the end…
José Clemente Orozco
The Art La retaguardia/The rear guard José Clemente Orozco created La retaguardia, or The Rear Guard , in 1929. Though Orozco painted many murals, he was also a renowned printmaker.…
Ed Paschke
The Art La Chanteuse and Prothesian With their electrifying greens, yellows, reds, and blues, La Chanteuse and Prothesian have the glow of a TV screen in a darkened room. Strong…
Red Grooms
The Art Blewy II A heavy rainstorm is swooping through a colorful intersection of stores and apartments, streets and sidewalks. Like a typical big city corner, this one is jam-packed…
Robert Barnes
The Art Ragno’s Place Unraveling Robert Barnes’ paintings, such as Ragno’s Place , is an exercise in sorting out how we arrive at “reality”. Even though his paintings are usually…
Robert Lostutter
The Art Trader of Green Trader of Green is an unusual portrait. Even though its format is a traditional close-up view of a figure shown from the front and with…
Warrington Colescott
The Art The Future: On the Line There’s a pun in the title The Future: On the Line . Assembly line workers are building vehicles of the future, but their…
Tom Uttech
The Art Portage to Cache Lake Changing daylight illuminates a vibrant scene of lake and forest in the American North. Spindly pine trees and moss-covered boulders fill a narrow strip…
Joan Snyder
The Art Requiem/Let Them Rest Requiem/Let Them Rest by Joan Snyder is an arresting mix of color and text. If a person were to walk by this image tagged on…
Toby Buonagurio
The Art Tangerine Rainbow A tangerine colored tiger strides forward, its mouth open in a roar, baring its teeth. Its stripes and the body armor covering its legs and shoulders…
Suellen Rocca
The Art Game Surrounded by a black margin, on what seems like a collaged sheet of paper painted with watercolors, is a colorful game board actually painted with thinned oils…
Jin Soo Kim
The Art untitled, C.H.F. Only three feet tall, untitled, C.H.F. is a bulbous little chair whose underlying metal frame is wrapped with thick skeins of tightly knotted brown paper twisted…
Sonya Y. Clark
The Art Triad Is this object made from real hair? Is it a hat? Is it part of a costume? Who might wear it? Since it is three-dimensional and is…
Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero
The Art Fish Sergio Gonzalez-Tornero has created a haunting image of an extraordinary fish as it floats in the depths of the sea. The fish appears to glow from within,…
Sarah Canright
The Art Shadow Sarah Canright’s painting Shadow can be read as three layers of precise patterning in ghostlike tones of blue, pink, purple, white, and green. The tightly composed background…
Sam Francis
The Art Untitled Mandala Radiating from a white center, four concentric squares of bright color glow from the surface of a large square sheet of white paper. Yellow, red, and…
Janet Fish
The Art Sasha with a Bowl of Candy During an interview with Janet Fish, Carter Ratcliff commented on the narrative aspect of her paintings, saying, “You seem to present moments…
Roy Lichtenstein
The Art Foot and Hand In this dramatic moment a booted foot stomps on a hand that has reached for a gun. Whatever has happened before and what is going…
Sam Gilliam – Irish Spring Here
The Art Carousel Irish Spring Here, created in 1980, is one of many heavily textured, geometric collage paintings that Sam Gilliam began creating in the mid 1970s. By this time…
Sam Gilliam – Carousel
The Art Carousel Carousel , a colorful, sixty-seven-foot-long, draped canvas, hangs suspended from the ceiling. Sam Gilliam was consulted about the arrangement of Carousel; however, he does not have strict…
Jane Hammond
The Art Irregular Plural Jane Hammond’s painting Irregular Plural II inspires a complex “reading.” The canvas, shaped like an enormous book with scalloped end sheets and gilt edging, is filled…
Rufino Tamayo
The Art Demi poisson/Halved Fish An ordinary meal of fish, offered with lemons for their citrus seasoning, takes on significance and dream-like mystery in this lithographic print by Rufino Tamayo,…
James Falconer
The Art Hateha Thick swathes of blue, orange, yellow, red, and black burst forth in James Falconer’s Hateha . Streaks of orange with yellow highlights and blue with thin black…
Romare Bearden – Serenade
The Art Serenade Serenade depicts an intimate moment between two people. They face each other and gaze into one another’s eyes. Their hands come together on the guitar. Their bodies…
J. Shimon & J. Lindemann
The Art Trish and Matt Downtown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin In John Shimon and Julie Lindemann’s black-and-white photograph, a young man and woman pose for a photograph captured using techniques from the…
Romare Bearden – Odysseus Leaves Nausicaa
The Art Odysseus Leaves Nausicaa The Greek epic The Odyssey is filled with colorful tales of overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of an overriding goal. In the segment of the…
Roger Brown – Forest Fire
The Art Forest Fire Roger Brown’s painting Forest Fire presents a mysterious scene. Cloud-like trees arranged in four neatly scalloped rows form a vast landscape of overlapping hills. Each tree…
Roger Brown – Sudden Avalanche and Mountain Sites
The Art Sudden Avalanche and Mountain Sites Two very different neighborhoods are depicted in Roger Brown’s oil paintings Sudden Avalanche and Mountain Sites, but in both scenes nature and humans…
Ray Yoshida – Unreasonable Lineage
The Art Unreasonable Lineage The torn paper fragments in this curious collage by Ray Yoshida appear to represent a collection of something. Thirty-eight irregularly shaped pieces of paper have been…
Hollis Sigler
The Art I Thought I Was In Paradise At first glance this colorful scene appears idyllic. Lawn chairs with matching fuchsia and orange stripes recline near a path of light.…
Ray Yoshida – AAIEEE!
The Art AAIEEE! In this cut-paper collage by Ray Yoshida, over 180 individually excised pieces float against a flat pale-gray background. The pasted fragments appear to be evenly distributed across…
Gladys Nilsson
The Art Some Other Tree and Sites Unscene Some Other Tree and Sites Unscene display Gladys Nilsson’s delight in creating puzzling spaces crowded with interacting figures, and scenes where sizes…
Frida Kahlo
The Art Pitahayas Frida Kahlo painted Still Life: Pitahayas in 1938 when she was thirty-one years old. It was painted with oil on aluminum, the traditional materials used in Mexico…
Frances Myers
The Art A One Act Play In A One Act Play , the familiar comic book hero Wonder Woman is confronted by another female character whose blonde hair, beaded necklace,…
Erik Weisenburger
The Art Ursa Memoriam At once beautiful and mysterious, the paintings of Erik Weisenburger enchant viewers with their luscious color and intricate detail. Upon first glance, his painting Ursa Memoriam…
Ellen Lanyon
The Art Chromos: Winter I, Autumn II, Spring III, Summer IV In Ellen Lanyon’s 1982─83 painting Chromos: Winter I, Autumn II, Spring III, Summer IV , four separate canvases function…
George Segal
The Art Depression Bread Line The large sculpture Depression Bread Line by George Segal portrays the experience of many urban Americans who suffered from hunger during the 1930s Great Depression.…
Edward Flood
The Art Aluminum Floater #2 Ed Flood’s Aluminum Floater #2 is made from layers of Plexiglas in an aluminum frame. The artwork’s transparency causes its environment to be part of…
Duane Brissette
The Art Moonrise In Moonrise , an apparently festive occasion—people arriving at a brightly lit pavilion for a night of dancing—forms the backdrop for a potentially dangerous encounter. The action…
Diego Rivera
The Art El sueño (La noche de los pobres)/Sleep (The night of the poor) El sueño (La noche de los pobres), or Sleep (The night of the poor) , is…
David Bigelow
The Art The Spy What a lot of rhinos! As many as twenty-one rhinoceros are standing in a plaza surrounded by adobe walls not far from a big city—settings that…
David Alfaro Siqueiros
The Art Retrato de Moisés Sáenz/Portrait of Moisés Sáenz In his Portrait of Moisés Sáenz , artist David Alfaro Siqueiros has brought together several of his interests: modernist art styles…
Clayton Brothers
The Art Tim House (In Green Pastures) Tim House (In Green Pastures) , the child-size sculpture by Rob and Christian Clayton, is a vibrantly painted wooden structure covered with words…
Cindy Sherman
The Art Untitled Film Still #30 In Untitled Film Still #30 , a distraught woman stares slack-jawed from within a dimly lit room. The setting is claustrophobic, with its dark…
Christina Ramberg
The Art Untitled The flat picture plane of Christina Ramberg’s small acrylic painting, Untitled, is divided into a two-by-two grid of equilateral squares. Each quadrant foregrounds a shadowy, hard-edged form…
Carl Corey
The Art 3641 – Tom and Dino Christ – Nick’s Restaurant – Madison, WI from the portfolio For Love and Money Nick’s Restaurant is a portrait of brothers Dino and…
Barbara Rossi
The Art Eye Deal In Barbara Rossi’s 1974 painting on Plexiglas Eye Deal, a mass of globular forms appears to emerge upwards from beyond the bottom of the picture plane.…
Andy Warhol
The Art Birmingham Race Riot Andy Warhol’s photographic screenprint Birmingham Race Riot reveals a moment during a 1963 civil rights demonstration when white police officers and their dogs attacked black…
