from Educators' eZine
More than 30 Federal agencies formed a working group in 1997 to make hundreds of federally supported teaching and learning resources easier to find. The result of that work is the FREE web site. FREE stands for Federal Resources for Educational Excellence. The web sites listed below are excerpted with permission from the FREE web site. This month, we highlight web sites for the arts; in other months, we feature other subject areas. You can search our site for the word FREE to find them.
This site traces the history of jazz from its birth in New Orleans to the swing era, bebop, and new frontiers. Five lessons include essays, videos, photos, and nearly 100 music clips of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Louie Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and others. Lessons include social and political context and are designed for history classes as well as music.
This site presents 130 music manuscripts, letters, and materials from a 3,500-item collection documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era. Essays by musicologists discuss items from Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Handel, Liszt, Mozart, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and other composers.
This is the first exhibit to focus on the relationships among photography, film, and painting in the works of Charles Sheeler (1883-1965). Sheeler explored these relationships with more rigor and discipline than perhaps any other artist of his generation.
Exploring Themes in American Art
These ten illustrated essays explore themes in American art. Each essay focuses on one theme: abstraction, the figure, historical subjects, landscape, marine painting, portraiture, narrative, genre, still life, and topographical views.
Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris
This site celebrates the range of the self-taught French painter's work. Known for his jungle scenes and taxidermy-like wild animals, Rousseau (1844-1910) is among the most famous of naive artists. A special web presentation explores themes in his paintings: landscapes of Paris, allegories, portraits, forests, jungles, and more. An interactive feature (inspired by Rousseau's art) lets children of all ages create fantasy landscapes.
Watch this slideshow of more than 30 paintings and works donated to the Gallery by John Wilmerding, an authority on American art. It includes 19th and early 20th century landscapes and seascapes by Heade and Lane, still lifes by Peto and Decker, figure paintings by Homer and Eakins, and works by Church, Bingham, and Kensett.
Leonard Bernstein: An American Life
This site is a guide to an 11-part documentary illuminating the life and work of one of America's greatest classical musicians, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). It provides an audio overview and web sites for learning about Bernstein and classical music.
