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The Fantastic World of the Dutch during the Golden Age
by Margaret C. Collier & Mary T. Cook, Seminole County
The Netherlands evoke images of windmills, tulips, and great art by people such as Rembrandt. The Dutch people gave the world so much more. From July 30 through August 4th of this past summer, I had the extreme pleasure of being involved in a workshop on the Golden years of the Dutch people. This institute was offered by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. My colleague, Mary T. Cook and I received a grant of assistance from the FCSS and also from the Arts Advocacy League. This assistance made it possible for us to attend this extraordinary event.
During our week long stay in Washington, DC, we spent busy days in the gallery hearing fantastic speakers about the different aspects of the Dutch culture and the legacy that they left the world during this period in addition to the famous works of art that we find familiar. The National Gallery of Art has one of the world’s finest collections of Dutch art. We saw and handled rare manuals over 500 years old. We sat in the Dutch Gallery learning the hidden meaning of much of the symbolism in Dutch paintings. For the average citizen who views art works in galleries, you would never really know about the background of paintings unless someone who has studied the period extensively can give you insight into those clues. Fascinating is the word that comes to my mind as we learned about various Dutch artists and why they painted what they did and how.
In addition to learning about the Dutch we met people from all over the United States, including Hawaii, who came to this institute to enrich their knowledge about art and history and to learn about i-pod casting. The exchange of information between teachers is always an interesting process and of course, the old expression made famous by the Disney ride, “it’s a small world after all” was certainly true. We met teachers who knew or knew of people in other states that Mrs. Cook and I have met on other occasions. The teacher from Hawaii knew another teacher who was selected to the USA Today 1st Teacher Team in 2000 with us. From Oklahoma, we had an art teacher whose son had just finished a soccer camp at Oklahoma University with Mrs. Cook’s son! We became a very close knit group of 25 teachers with common goals. Enthusiasm and renewal for all of us was very evident.
The culminating events for all of us included a dinner at the Dutch embassy where we met embassy personnel, exchange students who have been studying in the United States and of course, gallery officials. It was a very pleasant evening spent on hearing about our focused interests on the art and other contributions of the Dutch. We visited the Walter’s Art Gallery in Baltimore which has also many fantastic pieces of Dutch art as well as armament and sculptures of the period. The final activities included viewing the i-pod castings made by everyone. We each focused on a piece of Dutch art, wrote our own scripts, chose sound effects, chose appropriate music and learn to mesh all this together into a 3-5 minute presentation. The creativity and diversity was fantastic. We all agreed that despite the costs, this could be very useful technology for the classroom and its potential is unlimited. The Gallery dispensed free materials including a fantastic DVD about this period, posters, and books.
We would recommend that all teachers check out the websites of the large galleries in the United States. Not only can you enrich your knowledge in some aspect of social studies but you can renew your spirit and enthusiasm for the job that we love the best, teaching. Organizations such as FCSS can help make these types of experiences possible.
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