This blog centres on a visit I made to Michael Landy's 'Saints Alive' exhibition at the National Gallery. The exhibition will run until 24th November 2013 and consists of a series of large-scale moving sculptures representing various saints. The sculptures can be operated by the viewer, if they press a button/turn a wheel, and so on. More information can be found here.
I don't know if you'll have been able to tell, but a real interest of mine is integrating the creative arts with the secondary curriculum, especially the teaching and learning of history. I am proficient in drama and dance, but more out of my comfort zone in the realms of art and art history. This is something I want to develop. The National Curriculum recommends visits to galleries as a curriculum opportunity that should be provided (DfE, 2007, p. 6) and the recent government-commissioned Henley Review suggests that visits to cultural sites like art galleries can "deepen [young people's] understanding of the world around them" (Henley, 2012, p. 8). There are also explicit links between this religious-themed exhibition and the history topics that most schools offer at KS3: medieval beliefs and the structure of the Catholic Church is often a key part of earlier study, leading up to the Reformation. The significance of saints in the lives of ordinary people is often a key part of this. With this in mind, I was eager to visit this exhibition to see if I could marry my passion for religious-themed art with my love of teaching history.
Is this exhibition useful for teaching and learning?
The first aspect I have reflected on is the effectiveness of the interactive nature of the exhibition and its potential to engage pupils. Because the sculptures 'came to life' at the press of a button, pupils would feel they could take ownership of the exhibition, making it more immediately engaging than static portraits may appear at first glance. It's also very memorable - I have no doubt pupils would remember that Saint Apollonia was tortured by having her teeth pulled out after watching a 10-foot high model of said saint extract her own teeth at the press of a button!
This kinaesthetic, memorable aspect links to the second of my reflections. A guide speaking to us when we were waiting to go in made the very valid point that the exhibition had a 'fairground' feel to it, because it was so interactive and over-sized; almost grotesque. This feel could be extremely powerful in teaching about the 'tourism' aspect of medieval sainthood - perhaps with a link to the extreme popularity of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket and the significance the pilgrimage to Canterbury had for centuries after his death. A teacher could link the moving sculptures to attractions at a fairground, and then link this back to the popular appeal the saints had - making the significance of saints to medieval people far more accessible for pupils.
The exhibition is also a valuable tool for accessing higher-order thinking, for example dealing with religious symbology and abstract artistic concepts. In history, the concept of significance could be explored through posing questions like: why has the artist decided to sculpt saints at all? Why these specific saints? Why might people in the past have sculpted saints? What do the motivations of the artist and the people in the past tell us about significance of saints through time?
Similarly, there are strong and complex cross-curricular links brought about by this exhibition which would be highly valuable for a pupil's personal and cultural development as well as their development as a pupil of history. More emphasis on spiritual, moral and cultural development has been placed on schools by Ofsted, and the exhibition's links are therefore a crucial aspect of what makes it so potentially useful as a teaching and learning stimulus (Ofsted, 2013). Its links to Religious Education - the importance of saints, and, more interestingly, the darker issues surrounding their lives and their significance to Catholic people - are complex and could promote really thoughtful discussion. Similarly, the exhibition also included displays and a film focusing on the artist's process. This kind of meta-cognitive information could stimulate art & design-based discussions about choices that artists make and the artistic process. Most excitingly, this process could then be linked back to the process that a historian follows (making choices, finding evidence, compiling it into a structured piece of work for 'display') - highlighting to the pupils the intrinsic similarities between all of the arts. Macaulay - the man who famously likened history to portrait painting at the turn of the 20th century (Macaulay, 1900, p. 17) - would be proud!
I have outlined ways that this visit could be embedded into the KS3 history curriculum below. The National Gallery provides excellent facilities for school visits including an Education Suite, and this exhibition is completely free! More details can be found here. I would thoroughly urge teachers to plan an enrichment visit to this excellent sculpture exhibition if they are in the London area. The exhibition itself would take no more than an hour to visit - perhaps a half-day visit with a session in the Education Suite at the Gallery would be a sensible option.
So how can teachers embed a visit to 'Saints Alive' with the KS3 curriculum?
References
Henley, B. 2012. ‘Cultural Education in England’. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/77941/Cultural_Education_report.pdf
Department for Education, 2007. 'The National Curriculum for History'. http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/secondary/b00199545/history/programme/opportunities
Ofsted, 2013. 'The framework for school inspection'. http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/framework-for-school-inspection
Macaulay, T.B. 1900. Historical nuggets: the essence and art of history. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
I don't know if you'll have been able to tell, but a real interest of mine is integrating the creative arts with the secondary curriculum, especially the teaching and learning of history. I am proficient in drama and dance, but more out of my comfort zone in the realms of art and art history. This is something I want to develop. The National Curriculum recommends visits to galleries as a curriculum opportunity that should be provided (DfE, 2007, p. 6) and the recent government-commissioned Henley Review suggests that visits to cultural sites like art galleries can "deepen [young people's] understanding of the world around them" (Henley, 2012, p. 8). There are also explicit links between this religious-themed exhibition and the history topics that most schools offer at KS3: medieval beliefs and the structure of the Catholic Church is often a key part of earlier study, leading up to the Reformation. The significance of saints in the lives of ordinary people is often a key part of this. With this in mind, I was eager to visit this exhibition to see if I could marry my passion for religious-themed art with my love of teaching history.
Is this exhibition useful for teaching and learning?
The first aspect I have reflected on is the effectiveness of the interactive nature of the exhibition and its potential to engage pupils. Because the sculptures 'came to life' at the press of a button, pupils would feel they could take ownership of the exhibition, making it more immediately engaging than static portraits may appear at first glance. It's also very memorable - I have no doubt pupils would remember that Saint Apollonia was tortured by having her teeth pulled out after watching a 10-foot high model of said saint extract her own teeth at the press of a button!
This kinaesthetic, memorable aspect links to the second of my reflections. A guide speaking to us when we were waiting to go in made the very valid point that the exhibition had a 'fairground' feel to it, because it was so interactive and over-sized; almost grotesque. This feel could be extremely powerful in teaching about the 'tourism' aspect of medieval sainthood - perhaps with a link to the extreme popularity of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket and the significance the pilgrimage to Canterbury had for centuries after his death. A teacher could link the moving sculptures to attractions at a fairground, and then link this back to the popular appeal the saints had - making the significance of saints to medieval people far more accessible for pupils.
The exhibition is also a valuable tool for accessing higher-order thinking, for example dealing with religious symbology and abstract artistic concepts. In history, the concept of significance could be explored through posing questions like: why has the artist decided to sculpt saints at all? Why these specific saints? Why might people in the past have sculpted saints? What do the motivations of the artist and the people in the past tell us about significance of saints through time?
Similarly, there are strong and complex cross-curricular links brought about by this exhibition which would be highly valuable for a pupil's personal and cultural development as well as their development as a pupil of history. More emphasis on spiritual, moral and cultural development has been placed on schools by Ofsted, and the exhibition's links are therefore a crucial aspect of what makes it so potentially useful as a teaching and learning stimulus (Ofsted, 2013). Its links to Religious Education - the importance of saints, and, more interestingly, the darker issues surrounding their lives and their significance to Catholic people - are complex and could promote really thoughtful discussion. Similarly, the exhibition also included displays and a film focusing on the artist's process. This kind of meta-cognitive information could stimulate art & design-based discussions about choices that artists make and the artistic process. Most excitingly, this process could then be linked back to the process that a historian follows (making choices, finding evidence, compiling it into a structured piece of work for 'display') - highlighting to the pupils the intrinsic similarities between all of the arts. Macaulay - the man who famously likened history to portrait painting at the turn of the 20th century (Macaulay, 1900, p. 17) - would be proud!
I have outlined ways that this visit could be embedded into the KS3 history curriculum below. The National Gallery provides excellent facilities for school visits including an Education Suite, and this exhibition is completely free! More details can be found here. I would thoroughly urge teachers to plan an enrichment visit to this excellent sculpture exhibition if they are in the London area. The exhibition itself would take no more than an hour to visit - perhaps a half-day visit with a session in the Education Suite at the Gallery would be a sensible option.
So how can teachers embed a visit to 'Saints Alive' with the KS3 curriculum?
Prior knowledge needed:
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· The structure of the medieval church
· The importance of Heaven and Hell in medieval times
· Some knowledge of what a saint was and how you could become one
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Suggestions for activities during the visit:
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· Pupils use sculptures as stimulus to design their own
· Pupils create a comic book/speech bubbles of the artist’s thought process when creating the exhibition (really linking into present-day significance)
· Pupils to review the sculptures using a template sheet to gather information about the saint portrayed and the artist’s interpretation
· Pupils take photos of sculptures and use device (iPad etc if available) to cut and crop to make their own version of a sculpture. Then annotate to explain why they have made those artistic choices
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What could the visit lead on to?:
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· Pilgrimages in medieval times
· The story of Thomas Becket
· The Crusades
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Henley, B. 2012. ‘Cultural Education in England’. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/77941/Cultural_Education_report.pdf
Department for Education, 2007. 'The National Curriculum for History'. http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/secondary/b00199545/history/programme/opportunities
Ofsted, 2013. 'The framework for school inspection'. http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/framework-for-school-inspection
Macaulay, T.B. 1900. Historical nuggets: the essence and art of history. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert.
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