Have Slides, Will Travel!

If your classroom can be darkened and there’s a pull down screen, let us bring the Ball State University Museum of Art to you! During museum renovation, Nancy Huth, assistant director and curator of education, is available to present slide talks to your classes on the Ball State Campus or in the Muncie area. While many tours can still be accommodated during museum open hours throughout the renovation, topics listed below, drawn from past tours and talks, are available for presentation in your classroom. Please phone Ms. Huth at (765) 285-5242 or e-mail: nhuth@bsu.edu at least two weeks in advance of the desired date.

General Topics

Ancient Art

Middle Ages & Renaissance

Early Modern Europe (17th-18th centuries)

American & Indiana Art

Nineteenth & Twentieth Century

African Art

Asian Art

Native American Art

 

GENERAL TOPICS

A number of the principles that guide mathematics are shared by art. This talk focuses on artists’ use of mathematical principles in their work.

The distinct aspects that set Spanish painting apart from that of other countries is the topic of this talk.

Includes discussion of medieval and Rococo sculpture, along with prints by Dürer and the German Expressionists.

This talk presents viewer-centered tips and techniques for talking about paintings and sculptures with children.

Designed for students completing assignments in which they will be describing and/or discussing a work of art. Examples provided.

Looks at images of saints from the 15th through the 18th centuries.

Museum visitors are often perplexed by the number of nudes featured in painting and sculpture. This talk explores some of the reasons artists from the Renaissance forward depicted the nude.

This talk focuses on love themes in the collection.

Images of families in the museum’s collection are the focus of this talk.

Questions raised by works of art in the museum and how research answers some of the questions and "mysteries" that remain.

Common in ancient Rome, portraiture appeared again in the Renaissance and continues today. This talk features painted and sculpted portraits in the museum.

Images of war, torture, and death populate the history of art. This talk features examples from the 17th through the19th centuries.

Landscape appeared as an important subject in Europe in the17th century. Examples from the museum’s extensive collection of landscape paintings are the focus of this talk.

Animals appear in art from around the world. This talk looks at animal imagery.

The mischievous deeds of ancient Greek and Roman gods and goddesses have been fodder for centuries of art. This talk explores some mythological subjects from antiquity through the 20th century.

Italy was home to several great cultures in antiquity: the colonizing Greeks, the indigenous Etruscans, and the Romans of the Empire. This talk examines works in the museum’s collection produced by these three cultures.

(similar to above with inclusion of Egyptian and Greek)

Before there was goth, there was Gothic, a style characterized by intense artistic richness. This talk presents European art from the Gothic era.

The museum’s collection of Italian Renaissance art includes paintings by artists working in the circles of Leonardo da Vinci and Giovanni Bellini. Paintings from the 15th and 16th centuries are the focus of this talk.

From the middle ages through the 17th century the Virgin Mary was one of the most frequently depicted subjects in art. This talk examines changes in depictions of the Virgin Mary over time.

Examines the making and use of prayer books in the 15th century through the museum’s complete example.

Through two works in the collection, this talk examines images of Christ in the sculpture of 13th century Spain and France.

On (Not Off) the Wall: Great Moments in Italian Mural Painting

From Giotto to Michelangelo, Italian painters excelled in the art of wall painting. This talk examines some of the major fresco cycles of the Renaissance.

The seventeenth century in Europe produced some of the most dramatic and realistic paintings in the history of art. This talk focuses on the museum’s Italian Baroque paintings, including a recently solved mystery.

The style called "Baroque" flourished in the North and South of Europe during the 17th century. This talk examines a selection of the museum’s works from this era.

Two styles dominated French art in the 18th and early 19th centuries: Rococo and Neoclassicism. This talk examines examples of these two styles.

Examines a recently conserved Southern Netherlandish painting from the 17th century, with a focus on its context and costumes.

The museum’s Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is one of the most dramatic works in the collection and an excellent example of 17th-century Italian painting.

This talk examines Jan Van Kessel’s flower still life painting, from the era when still life became a major subject in art.

This talk takes an in-depth look at the museum’s terra cotta sculpture of Thomas Aquinas, the mysteries surrounding the sculpture’s subject and artist, and the Church’s vast sculpture programs of the early 18th century.

This talk examines Rembrandt’s ground-breaking etchings and his new interpretations of traditional religious subjects.

The late 18th and early 19th centuries witnessed radical changes in politics, science and the arts. This pivotal era produced two of the museum’s important recent acquisitions, featured in this talk.

The BSU Museum of Art is home to a number of important American sculptures. This talk presents works by Daniel Chester French, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Harriet Frishmuth and others.

From its early beginnings and throughout the course of the 19th century, American landscape painting underwent numerous stylistic changes, examined in this talk.

Impressionism: The Americans

This talk examines Impressionism in America at the turn of the century, focusing on the work of Childe Hassam.

Indiana was home to a group of painters called "The Hoosier Group." This talk examines work by these local artists, who enjoyed successful careers in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century.

Daniel Chester French, the artist who created Ball State’s Beneficence, also made a sculpture of Lincoln in the museum’s collection. This talk focuses on this earlier work by French.

Ball State and Muncie boast several traditional public sculptures by important American artists. In addition to Beneficence and Frog Baby on campus, Muncie is home to two Cyrus Dallin sculptures, Appeal to the Great Spirit and the Passing of the Buffalo. This talk includes discussion of these works in bronze.

Before Impressionism, 19th-century painting was dominated by various forms of Romanticism and Realism. This talk examines examples of all three styles.

Considered the most important botanical artist who ever lived, Pierre Joseph Redoute created hundreds of works in his lifetime. The museum of art houses numerous Redoute prints, the subject of this talk.

This talk distinguishes Neoclassicism from Realism, Romanticism from Impressionism, and a few other "-isms" in the 19th century.

Examines Barbizon and other landscape painters who served as an early inspiration to the French Impressionists.

Although their colorful and light-filled canvasses are widely loved today, the Impressionists had a rocky start. An overview of the Impressionists and their ground-breaking work is the subject of this talk.

This talk focuses on the museum’s Degas bronze Femme Enceinte in the context of the work of this Impressionist master.

This talk examines Impressionism in America at the turn of the century, focusing on the work of Childe Hassam

From his art nouveau jewelry to his decorative glass in the art deco style, this talk focuses on the work of this master of design.

Modern artists have manipulated the human figure in a variety of ways. This talk will examine these figural distortions in the museum’s modern painting and sculpture.

From Cubism to Abstract Expressionism, this talk focuses on some of the various forms of abstract art presented in the museum’s collection. 

This talk demystifies some of the motivations and goals of the mid-20th-century American artists known as the Abstract Expressionists.

Elegant and fierce masks and delicately carved figures are among the objects in the museum’s rich collection of African art. This talk features some of the highlights of the museum’s African collection.

Through works in the museum’s African Collection, this talk examines representations of the figure in the traditional art of Africa.

Traditional African societies used masks for many purposes: to honor ancestors, control the forces of nature, and to demonstrate the status of royalty. This talk examines several masks from the museum’s collection.

Buddhist Sculpture of Early India 
Chinese Ceramics of the 18^th Century
Art of the Japanese Print

Beadwork of the Plains

The Ojibwa (Chippewa) of the Woodlands made beautiful beaded accessories for personal adornment. This talk examines the museum’s Ojibwa bandoleer bag.

Tradition and Tourism: Aspects of Native American Art

Home