Hiromi Kaneda / Italian 

Presenting Italian Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC

 My Dream Idea for the Italian 2020 class (Intermediate Italian), that I am going to teach this coming Fall 2019, is to bring the entire class for a long weekend in DC and spend a day at the National Gallery of Art. Before going to the museum the students have to accomplish the following tasks:

-        To browse the National Art Gallery website and find out about Italian paintings, sculptures and decorative art that are exposed inside the museum.

-        To pick one piece of work of art and prepare an oral presentation of 8-10 minutes in Italian. (Students usually have a final presentation in Italian each semester for each level of Italian)

-        When we go to the National Art Gallery, each of them are going to be the Guide Tour for that specific work of art that they picked. The students become the expertise of that specific painting, sculpture or decorative art.

I believe that this experience in presenting a work of art in front of their classmates in Italian, outside the usual classroom setting, will be very fruitful for the students for various reasons: they get closer to the Italian language, culture and art in a real environment that it is not the University. It gives them the opportunity to see all the works of art in person and also share their knowledge about them in Italian. This exercise is going to enhance and reinforce their language skills.

Logistic for the field trip

We need to leave on Friday afternoon and take the Megabus from Charlottesville to Washington DC.

We are going to stay 2 nights (Friday and Saturday) in Washington DC. The reason why we need to stay 2 nights it is because of the transportation: unfortunately Megabus has limited rides to and from the two cities.        

Budget

Megabus Roundtrip Tickets for 20 Students + 1 Professor $1000

Hotel 2 nights $ 2000

Lunch Meal (Saturday) $500 

Total $3500