On November 9, 2017, Dr. Mark Malone, professor of music at William Carey University, and Limeul Eubanks, Staff Officer at the Office of Secondary Education at the Mississippi Department of Education, presented MAC’s Mississippi History Through the Arts: A Bicentennial Curriculum to educators at the Mississippi Art Education Association’s 2017 Fall Conference.

This curriculum is based on select artworks from the Mississippi Museum of Art’s bicentennial exhibition, Picturing Mississippi, 1817-2017; Land of Plenty, Pain, and Promise and The Mississippi Story, an exhibit of artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection. Dr. Mark Malone wrote the bicentennial curriculum for MAC and Limeul Eubanks helped ensure that the curriculum met state standards.

There were two primary components of the workshop which included an overview of the curriculum as well as a hands-on segment where teachers were guided through an exercise from one of the curriculum’s lessons.

The exercise was from Unit 2, Lesson 2 of the curriculum, which focuses on the importance of Natchez in the early years of Mississippi Statehood and the acclaimed art of John James Audubon.

MAEA conference presenters, Dr. Mark Malone and Limeul Eubanks.

Audubon was perhaps best known for his naturalist work and historic accounts of American wildlife, most notably, birds. Here, art teachers have been instructed to sketch a feather and birds.

The educators then applied watercolor to their sketches of Audubon’s American birds.

Here, an educator presents the finished product.

For more information about MAC’s bicentennial arts education, please visit: https://arts.ms.gov/mississippi-history-arts-bicentennial-journey/