One of the main features of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco site is its searchable image and text database 75,000 objects from the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Over 12,000 artists are represented in the collection. Exhibitions and specific information for both the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums are easily accessed. A new feature, the Virtual Gallery, allows you to create your own online gallery and share it with others. The accessible image collection and this ability to select and create personal online galleries from the huge database are very supportive of middle school through graduate student art education studies.
Type of Material:
Resource, collection, simulation
Recommended Uses:
Art education instruction, teacher education, interdisciplinary instruction.
Technical Requirements:
The Virtual Gallery where you can create your own collection and share it with others requires Shockwave 8 from Macromedia.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
Users of this site will be able view, appreciate, and find educational uses for the vast ine image collection of historical and cultural artwork in the deYoung and Legion of Honor Museums.
Target Student Population:
Middle School through Graduate School students and teachers; Anyone interested in viewing artwork.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Basic online searching skills are needed. Knowledge or understanding of particular artists, painting genres, or techniques will enhance the experience, but is not required.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The size and depth of this visual arts database is extraordinary. With over 75,000 objects available for viewing, many of the world's greatest art pieces are now available at your finger tips. The database contains images of paintings, sculptures and other artistic artifacts. Each image has a description of the item linked to it, along with the time period in which it was created. The new Virtual Gallery allows anyone to become immediately involved with the collection and become a virtual curator. This site can extremely useful for student teachers who need to learn about art education and for teachers who are located in rural or remote locations and wish to share visual art examples with historical and cultural contexts for their students. Teachers can certainly design assignments and lessons based on this visual art database to fit their specific needs and lessons. Advance preparation by the instructor can only enhance the visit and tasks accomplished by the students.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Art educators, teacher educators, and those who work in the humanities will be able to immediately put the image database and virtual gallery to use in their work. Research, investigations, and comparing and contrasting for styles, artists, techniques, etc. can be developed, constructed, or assigned with the information available at this site. The ability for the user to create his or her own gallery opens some interesting possibilities for use. Using the Virtual Gallery, instructors might have students create a gallery made up of images that demonstrate particular artistic elements. Another way the Virtual Gallery might be used is to have history or social studies methods students create an exhibit that depicts certain elements of a time period that can be used as media within a lesson.
Concerns:
This is more of a helpful hint than a concern: It is helpful to know what you are searching for or wish to find when you visit this site, but it is not necessary. By simply typing in a basic noun, like boat, you will find a vast array of images with boats. By typing in an artist's name you will find all the works in the entire collection by that artist. Educators can help make the visit to this site more meaningful by structuring the visit with a task or assignment when searching for a particular image or work by a particular artist.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The searchable database can be used immediately by both novices and experienced online users. It is available from almost every page within the site. Searching the database can be done by quicksearch, advanced search, and by key words. The site is easy to navigate and the information is clear and updated often. The images in the database load in thumbnail size first which is efficient. Users can select particular images and are able to zoom in several levels for close-ups.
Concerns:
None
Creative Commons:
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