DESCRIPTION: One student serves as a narrator to a group of blindfolded students and describes everything that he or she sees in a painting or sculpture. When description is complete, the group removes blindfolds and discusses the accuracy of the description.

OBJECTIVES: Students explore the nature of madern art while learning about the process needed to make an informed judgement.

PROCEDURE: It is a difficult task to make informed judgements about art. An art critic has to perceive, describe and interpret, before judging a work of art. This game serves to illustrate the difficulty of thorough description. I would like everyone to put on a blindfold. We need a narrator for round one. The narrator can remove his or her blindfold. (Determine which work of art is to be described by the narrator.) Look very carefully and notice everything about the painting (or sculpture) and describe everything that you see. Describe the painting or sculpture so completely and vividly that the blindfolded audience will get an accurate sense of the artwork's appearance. Now that the narrator has given you a complete description of the work, remove your blindfolds. Let's discuss the discrepancies between the verbal description and the actual work of art. What did you expect to see? Did they describe the material? The technique? The subject matter? The relationships of the visual elements? The Mood? How is the actual work different from your expectation? How would you modify the description given by the Narrator? Is the meaning of the work apparent? Let's select a new narrator (perhaps the student who was most critical of the first narrator) to describe another work of art.

MINNESOTA GRADUATION STANDARDS:
(1) Read, View, Listen
(2) Write and Speak
(3) Literature and the Arts

Age level: Grades 5 and up.
Artworks used: Any work.
Props needed: Blindfolds (Students could turn around).
Related to Minneapolis Sculpture Garden: No


© 1998 WALKER ART CENTER