Modern & Contemporary Art History Lessons
Modern & Contemporary Art History Lessons
Lessons on art from Impressionism to the present: the movements, the arguments behind them, and the analysis skills students need to write about a work they have never seen before.
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Art history units ready for the projector
Movement studies and visual analysis lessons pitched at grades 9 to 12; tap any cover for the full preview, contents and price.
Why teachers use these
Why art teachers use these
Art history usually has to fit inside a studio course, so you get a handful of periods to explain why a urinal ended up in a gallery and how Abstract Expressionism followed a war. Most art departments are one or two people with no shared scheme and no free evenings for building slide decks with decent images and decent questions. These units supply the sequence, the vocabulary and the writing frames that get students past saying they like the colors.
What's covered
What each download contains
A full lesson built around images, discussion and written analysis.
- Editable PowerPoint deck with images
- Four levels of differentiated worksheets
- Writing frames for visual analysis
- Full answer keys
- Lesson plan with timings
Make it work for everyone
Differentiation and assessing written response
Students who talk confidently about a painting often freeze when asked to write about it. The lower worksheet levels give sentence stems and a vocabulary bank tied to the work on screen, while the higher levels ask for an argued comparison between two pieces. Keep the written responses as a portfolio that shows analysis growing alongside the studio work.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Do these work for an AP Art History class?
They are not produced or endorsed by the College Board and they do not follow the course framework unit by unit. They cover the movements and the analytical writing the later content areas deal with, so they map onto much of what you teach after 1750. Use them for content and skills, then use official practice for exam format.
Are images included or do I supply my own?
The slide decks are built around the works under discussion and are ready to project. Because the files are editable PowerPoint, you can swap in pieces from a local collection or a current exhibition, which is usually the fastest way to make a contemporary art lesson feel like something other than a survey.
Can I teach these without an art history background?
Yes. The lesson plans carry the context you need, the answer keys model the responses you are looking for, and the slides hold the discussion questions. Teachers covering an art class from another subject use them most, and studio specialists use them to get the theory lessons handled properly.
Give students something to say about modern art
One download covers a movement, the analysis skills and the written task.
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