Visions of War

A course for educators

Looking at artworks in a range of mediums, from the ancient world to today, this course explores different ways of looking at and depicting war and its aftermath. The videos and additional resources featured here will give high school teachers the tools to talk about contemporary issues and integrate art into their classrooms as an extension of the required history curriculum.

Image: Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic 100, 1963-1975, acrylic on canvas, 84 × 240 in. (213.36 × 609.6 cm), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by the Art Museum Council and gift of the Dedalus Foundation, © Robert Motherwell Estate / licensed by VAGA, New York, NY, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA, (AC1995.95.1)


Your Instructors


Michelle Brenner
Michelle Brenner

Michelle Brenner has worked with elementary, high school, and college students in both gallery and classroom settings. Since earning her MA in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, she has taught at Hunter College, The College of New Jersey, and The Frick Collection in New York where she was the recipient of the Samuel H. Kress Fellowship in Museum Education. She also worked as a Curatorial Assistant at the American Federations of Arts. After serving as a content specialist for LACMA, Michelle is now head of education at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.



Veronica Alvarez
Veronica Alvarez

Veronica Alvarez has worked with elementary, high school, and college students, teaching subjects such as Spanish and ancient Mediterranean history, and has served as an art education consultant for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, UCLA's Chicano Studies Resource Center, and other LA area museums. After 14 years in the education department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, she moved to LACMA as Director of School and Teacher Programs. Veronica is currently a doctoral student at LMU’s Educational Leadership in Social Justice program.



Course Curriculum


  Introduction
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  War in Ancient Greece: Black-Figure Neck-Amphora with Battle Scene, c. 520 BCE
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  Genpei War: Yoshitsune Leaps Over Eight Boats at Dannoura Bay during the Battle of Yashima, 1865
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  The American Revolution: Mrs. Schuyler Burning Her Wheat Fields on the Approach of the British, 1852
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  World War I: Evening on the Wijtschaete plain, November, 1917, 1924
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  World War I: The parents, 1922–23
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  The Spanish Civil War: Elegy to the Spanish Republic 100, 1963–75
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  The Korean War: Mendicant (War Refugee Father and Child), Pusan, Korea, 1953
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