When U. S. History and Art History Collide!

To improve our pedagogical expertise, we here at Camp Nickleby use only the latest in government-approved, ‘research based’ teaching methods. We come prepared each day, loaded down with blank Venn diagrams, compare & contrast worksheets, analogy and metaphor builder worksheets (what’s a meta for anyway?) and lots of No. 2 pencils. But nothing quite beats rote memorization and daily review to really dull the little teenage mind.

Art history gets kinda fuzzy at times. In Art I today, we reviewed several different styles of art. One of those styles was Pop Art, practitioners of which include Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Jasper Johns, among others.

I showed the campers a slide of one of Jasper Johns’ flag paintings and asked if anyone remembered the name of the artist from last weeks’ lecture on Pop Art. One brave soul ventured forth with Betsy Ross! As I recall from last week’s lecture, Jasper Johns and the entire Pop Art movement was firmly grounded in the 1960s. If I recall anything from my high school American History classes, Ms. Ross was not! But then again, anything that happened before the year of their birth is just one big fuzzy ball of needless information.