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Art Tales: Not a Box

Age 4 through Grade 1

We will offer a selection of in-person and virtual field trips (using Zoom) for fall 2024.

Requests for winter/spring field trips (January 6 – May 30, 2025) will be accepted from December 1, 2024 – April 5, 2025.

Art Tales is a field trip designed for our youngest learners. This field trip includes an exploration of two works of art, the reading of Not a Box by author Antoinette Portis, and an art-making experience.

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This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.

Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Vincent Melzac), 2015.19.144

Book Summary

In Not a Box, a rabbit uses its imagination to transform a cardboard box into a race car, a robot, and a spaceship. With a bit of creativity, the ordinary becomes extraordinary!

Looking and Learning Skills

During the Art Tales: Not a Box field trip, students will discover how artists use their imaginations and draw inspiration from the world around them to create modern sculptures and paintings. On this field trip, students will:

• Observe, describe, compare, and contrast works of art.
• Create a three-dimensional multimedia work of art.
• Feel a sense of belonging in a museum setting.

In-Person Field Trip Information

Group Size: Up to 60 students
Length: 60 minutes 
Meeting Location: East Building Atrium

Virtual Field Trip Information

Length: 60 minutes
Materials needed: cardboard box, glue/tape, crayons.

Important Scheduling Information

Field trips must be scheduled at least four weeks in advance. Groups must contain at least 15 students.

Once your field trip has been scheduled, you will receive an email confirmation within ten business days.

Bus Transportation

Bus transportation is available for DCPS (District of Columbia Public Schools) participating in our docent-led school field trips. Teachers should follow the guidelines here to apply for bus transportation.

Examples of Works Featured on Field Trip

This free-floating sculpture, called a mobile, hangs from the ceiling and branches into two separate, vertical sections that hang from a shared wire. To our left, the larger part of the mobile is made of twelve flat, uniquely shaped paddles suspended on curving, painted wires in bowing, branch-like forms. Three black, leaf-like shapes are clustered at the top over a royal-blue form, a lemon-yellow form, two more black shapes, and five crimson-red shapes that get smaller as they get closer to the bottom. They are loosely spaced but hung to taper like a bunch of grapes. To our right, a second smaller set of branches and shapes, like a mini mobile, is made of seven branches. In this photograph, five of the rounded, black shapes hanging from the dangling wires face us and the others are seen from their edge, so appear as vertical lines.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Alexander Calder, Cascading Flowers, 1949, metal, wire, and paint, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, 1996.120.5
This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Vincent Melzac), 2015.19.144
The bodies and bicycles of five stylized cyclists fill this nearly square painting so parts of some of their bodies and bicycles are cut by the edges of the canvas. Shown against a background of mottled shell pink and light gray, the riders are closely packed, their wheels and bodies overlapping, and they seem close to us as they race to our right in profile. All lean low over their handlebars. The faces of the three riders at the front of the pack have lemon-yellow skin. The person at the top of the composition, seeming the farthest away from us, has ivory-colored skin, and the person at the back, to our left, has brown skin. They all wear different colored clothing. The racer at the front wears all black, and the one closest to us celery green with fuchsia around the hips. The cyclists farthest from us wear rust orange or canary yellow. The racer with brown skin wears frosty blue. The frames of the bicycles are dark forest green or black, and the colors of the wheels are either yellow or turquoise. The people’s faces and bodies are abstracted into flat, hard-edges shapes. The angles formed by their torsos, arms, and legs are echoed by the angles of their bicycles’ dark metal frames.
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Lyonel Feininger, The Bicycle Race, 1912, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.17
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Constantin Brâncuși, Bird in Space, 1927, brass, limestone, and wood, Given in loving memory of her husband, Taft Schreiber, by Rita Schreiber, 1989.31.3
This abstract, geometric painting has been tipped on one corner to create a diamond form rather than a square. The surface of the canvas is crisscrossed by an irregular grid of black lines running vertically and horizontally like offset ladders. The black lines create squares and rectangles of different sizes, and the width of the lines vary slightly. One complete square sits at the center of the composition and is painted white. Other rectangles are incomplete, their corners sliced by the edge of the canvas, and each is a different shade of white with hints of pale blue and gray. The black grid creates triangular forms where it meets the angled edge of the canvas in some places, and some of these are filled with flat areas of color. A tomato-red triangle is placed to the left of the top center point, and a vibrant yellow triangle is to the left of the lower center point. A black triangle is next to it at the bottom center, and a cobalt-blue triangle is situated just below the right point. The painting is signed with the artist’s initials at the lower center: “PM.”
Examples of Works Featured on Tour

Piet Mondrian, Tableau No. IV; Lozenge Composition with Red, Gray, Blue, Yellow, and Black, c. 1924/1925, oil on canvas, Gift of Herbert and Nannette Rothschild, 1971.51.1

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