AP Art History is Awestruck by Hudson River School Paintings!
On Tuesday, Dr. Gravel's AP Art History class went for a tour of the Hudson River School paintings at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Ms. Piccoli engaged the students in discussions about the landscape paintings using Visual Thinking Strategies which encourages participants to observe, think and feel emotions when looking at art. The students just took their AP exam last week and studied the Hudson River School earlier in the year. They really impressed Ms. Piccoli with their observations, thoughts and use of relevant vocabulary terms like "sublime" to describe the paintings and "divine illumination" when explaining the symbolism the artists incorporated in their use of light. The group had the opportunity to look closely at paintings by Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and William Bradford. Maeve Roylance stated, "It was very interesting to learn about all the different aspects of the paintings, but to then see how they all came together was really incredible."
