PIECES FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION LESSON PLANS AND ACTIVITIES ACTIVITY 1 Find William Miles’ Heavy Weight. Many of these questions can be used as discussions/essays or research projects before or after the museum visit. How might the civil rights movement at home have affected African-American soldiers fighting in Vietnam? How might it have affected their relationships with friends and loved ones back home who were much closer to the movement than they were? Are the images on the left side of the piece actual memories of this soldier, or are they representative of the African-American experience? How might these images affect the individual soldier portrayed in the artwork personally and as a soldier? How might being from a minority impact a soldier’s views of or feelings about the Vietnamese people or the country? ACTIVITY 2 Be on the lookout for Phong Tran’s Fight for Freedom. Students should look at it from different angles and while walking by it. What do they see? ACTIVITY 3 What are some of the images that make up the face in Bruce Sommer’s Anguish? ACTIVITY 4 Jay Burton Hellwwege's The Writer's Imagination can inspire several different interpretations; one such interpretation is how experience inspires art. How else can this piece be interpretted? Pre-visit or post-visit essay suggestion: Have the students discuss how strong, transformative memories, both traumatic and good ones, connect with the arts and personal expression.		TEACHER PACKET CONTENTS Lesson Plan and Activities Works Cited