March-April 2001 - Articles and Columns

Rebecca Rupp’s “Good Stuff” Column

Meet The Masters

    This is a detailed, attractive, and multifaceted art program that uses multimedia presentations on CD-ROM, print materials, and creative hands-on projects to teach art history, appreciation, theory, and technique.  Kids are encouraged to complete seven artist units per year.  Year 1, for example, includes a general overview of the program, plus units on Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Mondrian, Mary Cassatt, and Winslow Homer; Year 2 covers Remmington, O’Keeffe, Hokusai, Matisse, Degas, Kahlo and Wyeth.  Each unit consists of a narrated slide presentation on CD-ROM, with works by the featured artist, portraits, photographs, and other historical material.  Kids not only study and discuss famous paintings, prints, and sculptures, but view a letter written to Vincent Van Gogh by his brother Theo, listen to selections of jazz music to accompany Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” and see a photo of Monet’s “floating studio” (with all ten members of Monet’s enormous family on board).  They also participate in a range of creative hands-on activities – creating pastel-and-cut-paper portraits, for example, with studies of Mary Cassatt, experimenting with texture in reproductions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, using torn paper and crayons to imitate a Winslow-Homer-style ocean scene, devising their own Picasso-esque cubist still-life – as well as exploring the technicalities of art.

            During the first year’s studies, for example, they learn about color and value, make a color wheel, and experiment with patterns and line balance.  Curriculum units are available at three difficulty levels – beginner (grades K-2), intermediate (3-4), and advanced (5-8) – which makes the program nicely workable for those teaching kids of several age/skill levels at once (most of us).

            It’s all beautifully done and very detailed – the text even includes the questions parent/teachers should ask and the expected student responses.  This made me a bit twitchy since (1) I don’t normally talk like that, and (2) my kids have always been somewhat whacko in the matter of expected student responses.  However, you can always edit.  There’s a lot of good stuff here.

            The drawback: if your kids like art, they’ll slurp down their seven units in no time; don’t count on a year’s worth of “Meet the Masters” actually lasting a year, unless you do a good deal of piecing and stretching.

            One curriculum book and CD-ROM (one difficulty level), $85; two curriculum books (any two levels), $136; three curriculum books (all three levels), $191.25.  To order or to obtain more information, contact Meet The Masters, 331 W. Cristobal, San Clemente, CA 92672; (949) 492-1583; http://www.meetthemasters.com/.