Art-Making Activity: Word Power!
Create a positive message in your community with this Word Power activity. Read More
News
Four winning entries in Art Inspires short-story contest focus on works in decorative arts collection
In May 2020, NOMA’s learning and engagement department established an “Art Inspires” short story competition that asked contestants to craft a fictional tale based on selections from the museum’s permanent collection of decorative arts. Read More
Art-Making Activity: Community Quilt
Create a paper quilt square and ask your family members, friends, or neighbors to contribute to it. Read More
Object Lesson: Forever mural by Odili Donald Odita
Commissioned in honor of NOMA’s centennial, Forever is a large-scale wall painting by the Philadelphia-based, Nigerian-born artist Odili Donald Odita. Extending 150 feet, the mural contains 87 colors, calibrated to… Read More
Suggested Reading List: Besthoff Sculpture Garden
NOMA’s Museum Shop features books about the Besthoff Sculpture Garden and lavishly illustrated monographs about artists whose works are included in the Garden. Purchase a book for yourself or find a gift for the art lover in your life. Read More
Art-Making Activity: Scale It Up Grid Drawing
With inspiration from NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden, make a small drawing and then replicate it in a larger scale. Read More
Art-Making Activity: Shape Collage
Identify distinctive shapes in sculptures from NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden and create a shape collage using found household items and pictures. Read More
Object Lesson: “Saturn” punch service by Russel Wright
Taken on its own as a visual object, this punch service in NOMA’s decorative arts collection is striking. A large aluminum sphere punch bowl centers a galaxy of spherical cups riding on a ring like Saturn’s, the repeated shapes emphasized and softened by spherical birchwood handles. Read More
NOMA Cares: Checking in with our Museum Members
During the stay-at-home mandate established to flatten the curve of Covid-19, Tim Morales became part of a team of NOMA employees who made it their mission to call every NOMA Museum Member. Read More
Art-Making Activity: Self-Portrait Collage
Create a self-portrait on paper from collaged materials using your hand as a representation of your body. Read More
Object Lesson: America by Will Ryman
Will Ryman’s large-scale sculpture America is a reflection on the industries and economies that built the United States over the past few centuries. America is made of many materials, each of which have been carefully selected and arranged by Ryman to reflect the legacy of capitalism in this nation. Read More
Object Lesson: The Window of My Studio by Josef Sudek
In 1940, Josef Sudek began his best-known series of photographs, a body of images of or through his studio window in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Read More
Object Lesson: Studio Window, West 56th Street, New York by Leslie Gill
Photographs of and through windows have remained popular throughout the history of photography. In the early years, the presence of windows was driven by necessity: photography in its infancy required great amounts of light, and windows obliged. Read More
Object Lesson: Bruynzeel Boys’ Bedroom by Vilmos Huszár and Piet Klaarhamer
Photography has often been employed in the service of recording exceptional spaces, but a photograph always more or less distorts the space it is supposed to record. The distortion may enhance the true nature of the interior or it may severely misrepresent it. Read More
Object Lesson: Photography in private homes
None of the following photographs were taken by photographers in their own homes. Rather, to make each of the images discussed here, a photographer had to gain permission to cross… Read More
Art-Making Activity: Neighborhood Landscapes
What do you see when you look at this sculpture by artist Will Ryman? A club house? A log cabin? A home? This is a big sculpture that we are… Read More
Object Lesson: Self-Care and American Studio Pottery
Pottery has a long history as a tool for self-expression and a method of self-care. Whether your relationship to ceramics is placing your muddy hands around a spinning mound of clay, or your clean hands around a mug of tea, you’ve experienced the therapeutic qualities of pottery. Read More
Suggested Reading List: Home
NOMA’s Learning and Engagement staff suggests the following books related to themes of homeplace. In partnership with Octavia Books, links are provided to purchase these titles through this independent bookstore based in New Orleans. Read More