Make the JSMA part of your classroom!
We invite educators to use the museum and its resources to foster a culture of learning and collaboration in your classroom.
The JSMA is dedicated to serving K-12 communities throughout the state by providing training and educational programs that integrate the arts into the classroom. In support of this commitment, we also offer extensive educational outreach programs.
Experience the Museum
The museum’s collection includes over 18,000 works of art. Through the study of original objects, students can develop visual literacy and aesthetic skills and explore how art evokes emotion, communicates, connects, and inspires. We have rooms for class meetings, and you can even request that selected works be placed on view for curricular needs.
Schedule a guided tour of the museum for students in grades 2 through 12
Our experienced Exhibition Interpreters will guide your students in small group discussion incorporating accessible interpretation and Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). Open the door to increased critical thinking practice and art literacy in the lives of your students with a tour at the JSMA!
Art Studio activities are also available to compliment your tour and support social emotional learning (SEL) standards.
Exhibition Interpreters can visit your class or Zoom Into Your Room
If you teach in the (Lane County) 4J, Springfield, Bethel or South Lane districts, we can arrange for a 20-30 minute in person visit by a JSMA Exhibition Interpreter (EI) to visit your classroom. Your EI will visit and lead a discussion about our latest exhibitions and facilitate a Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) session with your class.
Exhibition Interpreters are also available to Zoom Into Your Room for a 20-30 minute visit to talk about a featured art piece, exhibition or for a Visual Thinking Strategies session.
Collections: Access a World of art and ideas
The museum’s collection includes over 18,000 works of art. Would you like to access artwork not on view? You can arrange for work to be presented in our Gilkey Research Center that will deepen your students’ understanding of course materials or support independent research. Our collections are also accessible online.
Shared Visions: Accessing private collections with JSMA
Access the art of internationally recognized artists from around the world from private holdings. Through our Shared Visions program, we are able to bring masterworks to the public for a limited viewing period. Past and present works are accompanied by a Research Guide.
Our Education Programs
The JSMA’s school programs are made possible with generous support from the Cheryl and Allyn Ford Educational Outreach Endowment, The Coeta and Donald Barker Foundation, and generous support from our members who contribute to our Fill Up the Bus campaign.
Arts Bridge
ArtsBridge at the University of Oregon, part of the ArtsBridge America network, works in partnership with local public schools to provide high-quality arts education to K-12 school children. Stipends are given to those undergraduate and graduate students who teach the arts and lead projects in art, drama, dance, and music.
K-12 teaching opportunities are available for top UO students in the visual and performing arts. UO students (scholars) interested in participating in UO ArtsBridge are asked to complete a scholar application form and mail it to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
Are you a teacher interested in having a scholar visit your classroom? Fill out a teacher application.
Questions? Contact Lisa Abia-Smith, director of education, abia@uoregon.edu
NewArt Northwest Kids
NewArt Northwest Kids is an annual juried exhibition of K-12 student art displayed in the museum's Education Corridor. This exhibition is made possible through support from The Cheryl and Allyn Ford Educational Outreach Endowment.
Learn more about the 2025 NewArt Northwest Kids exhibition.
Visit our current exhibitions
Discover our current exhibitions and explore the resources created for them (including virtual tours, videos with the artist, gallery guides, and more) which you can use in your class.
Pious Customs Religious Painting in European Art
A. Dean & Lucile I. McKenzie Gallery
Landscape, Mindscape Portrayals of Nature and the World from Korea and Beyond, 1700-2020
Wan Koo and Young Ja Huh Wing and Jin Joo Gallery of Korean Art
Collecting Stories Chinese Art through the Historians' Lens
Betty and John Soreng Gallery
Kitchen Table Talk
Focus Gallery
Four Seasons in Japanese Art and Tea
Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Wing
Recurring Seasons: Intertextuality of Seasonal Imagery in Japanese Literature and Woodblock Prints
Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Wing
Adapting Antiquity Classical Receptions in American Art
Morris Graves Gallery
Twenty-Four Seasons: Critical Temporality and Qiu Zhijie’s Light Writing
Coeta and Donald Barker Changing Exhibitions Gallery
Michael Brophy’s Reach: The Hanford Series
Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery
K-12 Curriculum Resources
Catalogues & Publications
A number of JSMA exhibitions over the years have Publications or Catalogues associated with them
You can explore these on our Collections site, either by year of exhibition or by the title.
Teaching Resource Guide to Teaching Art
A curriculum resource introducing Visual Thinking Strategies and artists, like Lesley Dill, who integrate the visual and language arts in their work.
Latin America Teacher Resource Guide
This project represents a collaborative effort by faculty and staff at the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, the Latin American Studies Program, and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art to address the increasing diversity—in terms of race and ethnicity—of Oregon’s public schools, in order to be able to understand and to incorporate such growing diversity in an enriching way in the classroom.
Teaching Guide to Printmaking
This Teacher's Guide uses A Distinguished Line as a point of departure to create a comprehensive manual for teachers in our state to visit the printmaking collections at The Coos Art Museum. Teachers will find an overview of the history of printmaking processes, as well as image guides and lesson plans that are meant to complement Oregon State Educational Standards.
VSA International Art Program for Children with Disabilities
A series of visual art lesson plans designed to engage students with disabilities.
Exploring Race and Identity Educator's Guide
Classroom Connections Through the Art of Kara Walker
Japan Curriculum Guide
This kit is intended to provide you and your students with an opportunity to learn about Japanese art through multiple disciplines and to teach several subjects using Japanese art as a didactic tool.
Chinese Cultural Revolution Guide
Included in this packet are a variety of lesson plans and resources that approach learning from different angles. Through these lesson plans, we hope to cover a multitude of learning and teaching styles to maximize the creative learning potential of both students and teachers.
Chinese Curriculum Guide
This outreach kit is intended to provide you and your students with an opportunity to learn about Chinese art through multiple disciplines and to teach several subjects using Chinese art as a didactic tool.
Korea Curriculum Guide
These resources include a Teacher Resource Guide and a Curricular unit about Korea. They have recently been updated.
Resistance as Power: A Curatorial Response to "Under the Feet of Jesus"
A visitor's guide to "Under the Feet of Jesus."
Ralph Steadman: A Retrospective
"I get my best ideas in a thunderstorm. I have the power and majesty of nature on my side." - Ralph Steadman
Carrie Mae Weeems: The Usual Suspects
Weems addresses the constructed nature of racial identity— specifically, representations that associate black bodies with criminality and the resultant killings of black men, women, and children without consequence.
Roger Shimomura: By Looking Back, We Look Forward
"Art has a way of exercising every part of what it is to be a human being, a feeling human being, from the intellectual to the emotional to the political." - Roger Shimomura
Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments
A curriculum unit inspired by the work of Xiaoze Xie, a contemporary Chinese painter, that explores how artists see and comment on historic and current events through the visual arts.