Year 7 - Art and design
Art, empire and museums: who owns art?
An overview of art
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
In this unit pupils enhance their critical thinking exploring art from various perspectives. They discuss what defines art, study galleries and museums and art's connection to the curriculum. They consider drawing and how emotions are expressed using this medium.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to explore, research and curate a display showing an understanding of context and history.
Key Notes
- Museums and galleries have a range of artefacts from around the world and often link to histories of Empire.
- Museums are rethinking the ethics behind collections in terms of colonialism.
- Some indigenous communities are asking for their artefacts to be given back and this is known as repatriation.
- Understanding the original purpose of artefacts is vital as this may differ to how they are shown in museum collections.
Vocabulary To Learn
- collection: the gathering of art by a private or public institution
- colonisation: the process of a country taking over another
- repatriation: when an artwork or artefact is returned to the country of origin
- curate: to select artwork and organise art for presentation
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- All of the artwork held in public institutions within the United Kingdom originates from there.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
Museums and galleries have a range of artefacts from around the world and often link to histories of Empire. Museums are rethinking the ethics behind collections in terms of colonialism.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'collection'
the gathering of art by a private or public institution.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: All of the artwork held in public institutions within the United Kingdom originates from there. Correction: Some artwork held in the collections of public institutions in the UK were created by civilisations that were colonised by the British Empire.
More Lessons In This Unit
Browse all guides in the Year 7 Art and design guide library.