These Asian museums have resources for K-12 teachers, students, and their families. For teachers, there are curriculum guides, lab collections you can embed in your presentation or site, “Freer in Focus” talks by docents, providing background on different works in the collection, and videos of some artists at work. Finally, there is (at the time of this writing) Smithsonian X 3D, an experimental 3D viewer of select objects in the collections.
Students and teachers alike can explore works, with descriptions, in the collections which include: American, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Near Eastern, Arts of the Islamic World, Biblical Manuscripts, Chinese, Contemporary, Japanese, South Asian & Himalayan, Southeast Asian, and Art Across Asia.
One past contemporary exhibition was Xu Bing: Word Play Interact with the art of Chinese artist Xu Bing. He is a leader in the New Wave Art Movement in China in the late 1980s. These interactives were designed to help visitors engage in Xu Bing’s exhibition, making use of installation sketches, interviews and photographs.
