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What Is: My Masterpieces

The Pasadena Educational Foundation’s My Masterpieces: Discovering Art in My Community program is a wholly immersive experience that allows every Pasadena Unified School District elementary student to grow and nurture their creative expression over the first seven years of their education.

My Masterpieces is the result of the partnership between the PUSD and several of Pasadena’s excellent cultural institutions, providing every PUSD student from kindergarten to sixth grade with the opportunity to visit each institution with a guiding artistic curriculum unique to My Masterpieces.

Every student in each grade goes on a field trip with their class to a different cultural institution to reflect upon various questions about art. These themes progress over the years, building upon previous visits.

Where does the journey take students?

TK/Kindergarten students explore the physical surroundings at Kidspace Children’s Museum in order to observe local plants and animals. Through art, stories, and play, they examine life cycles and explore how senses help us understand the natural world.

How does observing nature influence the way we relate to art?

First graders visit art collections at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanic Gardens and are guided through five stops where they engage in close looking and collective meaning-making. The tour focuses on the theme of stories and storytelling and the question: How does the artist tell the story? At the end of the tour, students draw a story of their own in their Huntington booklet, which is then used as a classroom resource.

How does learning about art impact how we perceive the world?

Second graders follow Side Street Projects’ teaching artists on a public art tour in Pasadena’s Civic Center aided by an interactive guidebook where students can draw and reflect on the public art pieces. Then, the same teaching artist goes to the classroom and leads students through a hands-on workshop where students collaborate on a public art piece inspired by the tour and the drawings in their workbook. Students also visit Descanso Gardens. During their walk, they use found natural materials to build a site-specific “nest”. They then head to the Sturt Haaga Gallery and are led by Descanso’s teaching artists in an art-making activity that relates to the seasonal exhibition.

What stories are told through art in the community?

Third graders are guided by PUSD junior docents through the historic Gamble House. Throughout the tour, students are prompted to examine both form and function in the details of the furnishings and exterior elements of the house. They observe architectural continuity throughout these elements. Students design a house or room and create an original motif that expresses their own voice. At the Autry Museum, students will explore how the Tongva people use their knowledge of the land and environment to survive, using form and function to create artistic tools.

In what ways do artists explore both form and function?

Fourth graders explore the art collection in the Fenyes Mansion of the Pasadena Museum of History, led by PMH staff and volunteers alongside middle-school junior docents. The students discuss the use of varying artistic techniques and mediums and then participate in a hands-on art workshop as well as visiting current exhibitions. Students also visit the ArtCenter College of Design.

Why have artists historically been drawn to California?

Fifth graders engage in docent-led tours of the collections of the Norton Simon Museum. They are prompted to express themselves through landscapes, real and imagined. They also explore concepts of dance in art across cultures and mediums. Students create two pieces of art in different mediums depicting the same activity. At the Armory Center for the Arts, they experience a contemporary art exhibition and experiment with art materials to make their own work.

How do artists choose their medium to best convey their artistic message?

Sixth graders enhance their study of ancient civilizations by taking a journey through the USC Pacific Asia Museum. They examine the convergence of culture through art, economics, politics, and philosophical ideas.

How do ideas converge in the exchange of culture through art?

The ongoing goals of My Masterpieces are to:

  • Engage all PUSD K-6 students in integrated curriculum that engages them with eleven museums and visual arts organizations to teach them creative skills and content knowledge and develop their critical thinking and interpretive abilities.
  • Increase the knowledge and ability of teachers to incorporate the arts into everyday teaching and learning in the classroom.
  • Encourage teachers, students, PUSD families, and the broader Pasadena community to take advantage of these resources by reducing barriers to participation.

READ MORE OF OUR STORIES >

PBS Inside California Education:
My Masterpieces – A Cultural Learning Journey

Watch now!

Did you know?

Parents in grades K-6, did you know that through the My Masterpieces Program your family can visit museums and cultural centers for free? Ask your students and their teachers about how your family can go back to places they went on a field trip.

9
Partner Organizations
9000
Students per Year
490
Teachers per Year
24
Schools

My Masterpieces has four core components:

Classroom Curriculum

A classroom-based curriculum that integrates art with other core subject areas like language arts, math, social studies, and science

Field Trips

At least one field trip to a local museum or arts organization.  Field trips build upon what was taught in the classroom

Teacher Training

Professional development opportunities for teachers

Family Access

Family access points, such as free passes, school-wide memberships, or free “My Masterpieces Days”

My Masterpieces and Open Stage are two of the most important programmatic accomplishments of Pasadena Educational Foundation, and reflects PEF’s vision to leverage the community’s remarkable resources to benefit all the students in PUSD.  They also reflect the strong collective effort of the PEF, PUSD, the arts community, and philanthropic community which has restored arts education as an integral part of teaching and learning in every school in the district.

STUDENT OUTCOMES INCLUDE:

Students develop perceptual abilities by studying dozens of works of art from a variety of cultures and eras, both in the class and during the field trips.

Students learn art-making skills by working with a range of materials and creating their own works of art in different media and styles.

Students acquire an understanding of the ways in which art can reflect the time and place of its creation, and refer to artwork they have seen when studying other subjects such as history.

Students gain the basic content knowledge to make their own informed opinions about art and the vocabulary to articulate their ideas coherently.

What They Are Saying

  • Students were very engaged with the information presented. They felt a connection to the artist because she was a Pasadena resident who went to one of our local schools! They were able to see primary sources from the artist.
    • Jose Guzman, 5th grade teacher
    Jose Guzman
  • It made my students more knowledgeable about public art. They will be excited to see their public art in the school, once it is completed. I think they will be more inspired to create art.
    • Allison Yee, 2nd grade teacher
    Allison Yee
  • Students were able to view and critique art in a meaningful way and with an understanding they did not have before.
    • Stephanie Norton, 4th grade teacher
    Stephanie Norton
  • They enjoyed learning about the people who lived in the [Gamble] house and I kept reminding them to imagine being a child and growing up here.  How would you feel?  What would you be wearing, eating, etc.?
    • Deborah Kostich, 4th grade teacher
    Deborah Kostich
  • This is an excellent experience for my special needs students to get to go out into the community and learn in an experiential environment.
    • Jamie Munro, Kindergarten teacher
    Jamie Munro

Funding for My Masterpieces is generously provided by Individual donors from the community, our My Masterpieces Art Partners and the following:

Ralph M. Parsons Foundation

John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation

Helen and Will Webster Foundation

Jim and Anne Rothenberg

Help keep arts in our schools thriving!

My Masterpieces is one of the many ways the Pasadena Educational Foundation helps to create a vibrant and enriching educational experience for all public school children in Pasadena, Altadena, and Sierra Madre.

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