Louvre Art Exhibit Spurs Historical Discussion
Maggie Estes, a teaching artist at the High Museum, worked with the students.
AIS students at the High Museum.
This year, AIS began a long-term partnership with the High Museum of Art and the three-year-long exhibit Louvre Atlanta. On December 6, our fourth-grade French students (chaperoned by Frédérique McGirt, their French teacher, Sharon Hermann, their librarian, Joyce O'Brien, their art teacher and Kalin King, Grade 4 room parent) had a chance to view the exhibit featuring the French kings as collectors. Looking at symbols of power in the visual arts, they also discovered how these kings were using images to promote their time, their way of life and their luxurious styles. But more than this, the exhibition was also a great point of entry into our new unit of inquiry, "Time for a Change".
Unfortunately, when 10,000 people were living in Louis the XIV's extravagant palace in Versailles, about 97 percent of the French population was fighting against poverty. By the end of the eighteenth century, French philosophers had denounced the absolutism of monarchy and enlightened such minds as the Marquis de Lafayette, who became one of the French heroes, along with the Comte de Rochambeau, of the American Revolutionary War.
More changes were on their way in France when, in July 1789, Lafayette drafted a declaration of rights modeled on Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was adopted by the National Constituent Assembly. Lafayette pleaded for religious tolerance, trials by jury, gradual emancipation of slaves, and freedom of the press.
In this context, the Louvre Atlanta exhibit launched a great opportunity for our students to connect to the central idea of our unit, which has an inquiry into governments and how individuals and events bring changes in history.
We will certainly keep an eye open for the years to come with our partnership with the High Museum and the Louvre Atlanta exhibit.