Tableau

This week our class learned a new way to study and understand historical art. What we did
was called a “Tableau.” Volunteers from our class went to the front of the room and did a
sort of live action recreation of it. The volunteers did their best to re re-create what we saw
in the painting with props, and then also tried to recreate the motions they believed were
happening at the time. Then, everyone sat in silence for a few minutes. We took in the scene
and contemplated the feelings and various things the people featured had going on in their
personal lives at that moment. Then, we asked the live characters questions that we had
come up with and they answered. This activity did such a good job of giving me, a
22-year-old, a deeper learning connection with the art piece. I know for a fact that it would be
an excellent way of doing the same for a class full of elementary students!

Here is a picture of what this looked like in the middle of the activity:

Here is a blog that shows how they did a Tableau in their first and second grade classrooms:

https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/k-6-art-4660763/tableaux-vivants-living-pictures-performance-3655520159