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Free Online Art Learning Resources for Students and Teachers

3 min read

Did you know that the National Gallery of Art offers free learning resources and programs for audiences of all ages?

To support teachers, parents and caregivers, and students, our educators created this selection of activities. Use these lesson plans, films, and other materials to explore art with kids of all ages, from preschoolers to high schoolers.

1. Art Tales for Pre-K

Art Tales for Pre-K

Ages 4–6

Inspire creativity in your pre-K and kindergarten-aged kids through hands-on art activities and children’s books suggestions. Download coloring pages of works in the National Gallery’s collection for extra fun!

Disponible en español.

 

2. Process and Product

Lynda Benglis, Untitled, 1968, poured pigmented latex, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, 2016.11.2

Process and Product

Ages 10–14

Explore different forms of artmaking and find inspiration to build your artistic skills. This resource features videos with contemporary artists, easy-to-follow explainers for artistic techniques, and lessons for beginner experimentation.

 

3. Afro Atlantic Histories: Teaching the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Afro Atlantic Histories: Teaching the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Ages 14–18

Use art to teach the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies. This resource, created by the National Gallery and National Endowment for the Humanities, provides art and history educators with inspiration and tools to help students build historical thinking.

Available on both nga.gov and edsitement.neh.gov, it pairs works from the National Gallery’s collection with discussion questions, curriculum connections, and in-depth activities.

 

4. Uncovering America

Three young Black girls lie on the grass in this closely cropped, sepia-toned, circular photograph so their faces roughly line up near the center. At the bottom of the composition, one girl lies on her back and looks up into the sky. Her head, torso, and right arm are visible. She wears a floral-patterned dress and holds her right hand up to the top of her head. The second girl reclines on her right side behind the first, so she is angled to our left. She props her head in her right hand and looks steadily at us. Her face hovers at the center of the composition. She wears a white t-shirt and a garland encircles her head. The third girl, at the top of the composition, seems to prop her body up on her left elbow. She wears a floral dress and looks down and to our right. Grass and paving rocks fill the space behind her.
Carrie Mae Weems, May Flowers, 2002, printed 2013, chromogenic print, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2014.3.1

Uncovering America

Ages 5–18

Uncover what it means to be American through art at the National Gallery. Find stories of creativity, struggle, and resilience. This set of resources for K–12 educators features works that reflect the richness and diversity of the people, places, and cultures of the United States.

Encourage creative, critical, and historical thinking in your students as you examine works of art from the country’s creation to the present day. Fifteen thematic modules include Expressing the Individual, People and the Environment, and Activism and Protest.

 

5. Children’s Video Tours

Four light-skinned ballerinas with russet-orange hair tied back in buns adjust the straps of their bodices as they gather close together, their bodies and wide, knee-length tutus taking up the left half of this horizontal painting. The background or backdrop beyond them shows a grove of deep green trees to our left and a sunset view of meadows leading back to trees to our right. Three of the dancers stand in a row that extends from the lower left corner to our right and away from us. All three wear rust-orange bodices over tutus that are painted loosely with flecks of pale celery green and buttercup yellow against a muted royal-blue background. Their bodices and upper bodies are outlined with black. The woman closest to us stands with her body angled to our right. Her face turns away as she looks to her left and adjusts that shoulder strap. The two dancers farther from us stand with their backs to us, their bodies angled away from us to our left. The middle dancer looks back over her right shoulder as she lifts the other elbow to adjust that strap. The third dancer in the row holds both hands to her right strap as she looks off into the distance, to our left. The fourth ballerina, to our far left beyond this trio, stands with the arm we can see, her left, lifted with her hand held high as she looks off to our right. Her bodice is a brighter carrot orange, and is more loosely painted. The green foliage behind the dancers extends off the top edge of the painting. The pale sage-green field to the right stretches before puffy, rounded trees daubed with mauve-pink highlights. The coral-pink and golden yellow sky is streaked with lavender-gray clouds. The artist signed his name in red paint with tiny, almost illegible letters in the lower right corner, “Degas.”
Edgar Degas, Four Dancers, c. 1899, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.122

Children’s Video Tours

Ages 4–18

These 50 video tours allow you to take a closer look together. Explore paintings, people, places, and surprising scenes from distant lands and times.

Check out more educational videos.

 

6. An Eye for Art: Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work

Shown from the waist up, an older man with pale, peachy skin looks out at us with deep-set, gray eyes under a furrowed brow, in front of a sable-brown background in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left, and his face turns to us. He has a faintly pink, bulbous nose, and his slightly sunken cheeks are shaded with gray. His peach-colored lips are framed with a wispy, gray mustache and goatee. Bronze-orange lines are incised within the battleship gray of his hair to create soft curls under his brown beret, which has gold trim around the base. The dark collar of his fawn-brown coat is turned up so his neck is covered. He is lit from the upper left, so his body and the right side of the painting are deeply shadowed. On our left, the canvas is painted with blended strokes of tawny and dark brown. His dark coat blends into the background, and his folded hands are in shadow in the lower left corner. The brushstrokes are visible in some areas, especially in the man’s face. The painting is signed and dated next to his shoulder, to our left, “Rembrandt f. 1659.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1659, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.72

An Eye for Art: Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work

Ages 5–12

This family-oriented art resource introduces children to more than 50 great artists and their work. Corresponding activities inspire artistic development, focused looking, and creative writing.

Discover different periods and themes: Studying Nature, Exploring Places, Examining Portraits, Telling Stories, Observing Everyday Life, Questioning Traditions, and Playing with Space. Individual sections are available for PDF download.

 

7. Look Together

Two men, a woman, and three children, all with brown skin, gather around a table in a house in this horizontal painting. A bespectacled, white-haired man sits to our left, wearing a black coat and suit. He looks up and to our right, his chin slightly lifted. A black top hat and a book sit near his feet, and a gray umbrella leans against the back of his worn wooden chair. Opposite him, to our right, a younger man has short black hair and a trimmed beard. He props one elbow on a cigar box on the table and rests his chin in that hand. With his other hand, he grasps the lapel of his slate-blue jacket, which is worn over a cream-white shirt. There is a patch in one elbow of the jacket and on one of the knees in his tan-colored pants. Two small children gather around him. The smallest child turns away from us as they rest their folded arms and head on one of the man's knees. That child wears a knee-length, dress-like garment striped with parchment brown and beige. Behind the man, to our right, a slightly older boy kneels on a bench on the far side of the table and rests his elbows on the white tablecloth. That boy wears an aquamarine-blue shirt and dove-gray pants. Both children are barefoot. On the far side of the table, near the older man, a woman stands and leans forward to spoon food into the white dish he holds. She wears a red kerchief tied around her head and a fog-blue apron over a white shirt patterned with a muted indigo-blue grid. A young girl, the oldest child, stands on the far side of the table between the younger man and woman. Seen from the chest up, the girl's face and body are angled to our right, toward her father, but she looks to our left from the corners of her eyes. She wears a coral-red, high-collared garment with white polka dots. On the table is a serving bowl, cup, and a kettle. Behind the woman, one door of a tall brick-red cupboard is ajar. Plates and vessels line the shelves within. A fireplace to the right has an opening as tall as the stooping woman. The mantle is lined with a manual coffee grinder, a white jar painted with a blue design, and clothes irons. A circus poster hangs behind the open door of the cupboard. A string of dried red chilis hangs next to a window between the poster and fireplace mantle. A banjo rests on a stool in front of the table, and a white cat licks a pie plate near the father's feet. The aritst signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, "Richd. N. Brooke. 1881 (ELEVE DE BONNAT - PARIS)."
Richard Norris Brooke, A Pastoral Visit, 1881, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2014.136.119

Look Together

Ages 4–18

Use these online conversation starters to connect with art—and with one another. This resource guides you in selecting a work of art, sharing your observations, and making comparisons together.

Disponible en español.

 

8. Paint 'n' Play

Paint 'n' Play

Ages 5 and up

Create your own work of art using brushes and palettes from artists in our collection. Try painting like Vincent van Gogh or Alma Thomas.

We recommend playing on a computer or tablet. If you’re using a tablet, be sure to rotate your device to landscape mode.

 

9. Grades 3 to 5 Lessons and Activities

Winslow Homer, Native hut at Nassau, 1885, watercolor and graphite with scraping and blotting on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.20

Grades 3 to 5 Lessons and Activities

Ages 8–11

These expanded lessons connect art with writing, math, science, and history. For example, in Homer in the Bahamas, students learn about the life of painter Winslow Homer, research possible waterway pollutants, and write a journal entry imagining daily life in this setting.

 

10. Youtube Videos

Youtube Videos

All ages

Immerse yourself in some of our favorite videos on artists and their creative process. Find Your New Favorite Artist, watch a painter try to create a work by John Singer Sargent, or make your own paper flowers inspired by Berthe Morisot.

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