Depression Era Families

Middle School, 6-8th grade/Visual Arts, Social Studies, U.S. History
Author: Newark Museum
 

 

Lesson Description

Family life during the 1930s Great Depression could be hard, as fathers lost their jobs and mothers scrimped to make ends meet. Artists Minetta Good and Dorothea Lange bear witness to how families on both sides of the United States met these challenges. 
 
In this lesson, students compare Minetta Good’s painting of a family selling household items and handmade goods in At the Country Auction with Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph Migrant Mother. After viewing 1930s household items, students create a collage or drawing of such objects. They write an imagined news story about the country auction in Good’s painting.
 

 

Objectives

At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
  • Describe economic problems that ordinary American families encountered during the Great Depression and understand how they dealt with these difficulties.
  • Identify ways Minetta Good and Dorothea Lange composed their art to deliver a message.
  • Create an artwork that demonstrates their understanding of everyday life during the 1930s.
  • Write an imaginary news story about the Depression-era auction and subjects in Minetta Good’s painting At the Country Auction that indicates an understanding of individual financial difficulties and solutions.

 

Learning Standards

NAES – VisArts – 5–8, 1 Understanding and applying media, techniques, and processes
NAES – VisArts – 5–8, 4 Understanding the visual arts in relation to history and cultures 
NAES – VisArts – 5–8, 6 Making connections between visual arts and other disciplines
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6–8.7 Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts
 

Lesson Activies 

Activity: Look and Think Worksheet 

Minetta Good’s painting At the Country Auction 

Before discussing Minetta Good’s At the Country Auction, have students study it individually. 
 
After giving a few minutes to view, have students complete Worksheet 1, Look and Think (included below). This worksheet is a guide to help students look closely at the painting. Use the worksheet questions and students’ answers as a framework for class discussion. Encourage them to notice details Good added to help us understand this story and the people in the painting.
Download full PDF lesson above to access Activity Worksheet
 
 
 

Activity :  Compare and Contrast Good’s painting to Dorothea Lange’s photograph Migrant Mother 

  •   Have students analyze Dorothea Lange’s photograph Migrant Mother. 
  •   Ask them what they think is going on in this photograph. They should support their answers with clues in the picture. 
  •   Working in small groups, students may use the Venn diagram on Worksheet 2 to compare Lange’s 1936 photograph to Good’s 1935   painting At the Country Auction.
Download full PDF lesson above to access Activity Worksheet

 

 

Activity: Create a Newspaper Article Covering a Country Auction in the 1930s  

  •   Show and analyze the three-dimensional images of Newark Museum teaching collection objects including pottery and a toaster.
  •   Have students imagine they are writing a newspaper article about the country auction in Minetta Good’s painting.
  •   Use the guided questions as details that should be included in their article. 
  •   Be sure they mention the three-dimensional objects and the family’s objects that were sold at this auction, including how much they sold for and their purpose during this era.  
 
 
To be included in the article: 
  •   What will be the title of your news article?
  •   What type of article are you writing? (news, feature, style?)
  •   Create the setting for your article: Where did the auction take place? When did the auction take place? 
  •   Create a purpose for the auction. Why were these people at the auction? Where did the items they were selling come from? How did they  feel about selling these things? What was the most popular item sold? Who attended? 
  •   Name two of the people in the painting. Create a quote for each of them, based on what you think they would have said about the  auction before attending it or what they said as they were leaving. Consider their gestures and facial expressions as you write their  reactions.

 

 

Extending the Lesson

  • Have students research buildings and art created by the WPA in your community. The WPA built public buildings, such as schools, parks, airports, and libraries. WPA artists created murals and sculpture for public spaces.
 
  • Show students art by Regionalist painters Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Have them compare their style to Minetta Good’s painting. See The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, by Grant Wood, and The Sources of Country Music in Picturing America, http://picturingamerica.neh.gov.
 
  • Students may paint a still life of a collection of historical objects. 
 
  • Assign students to photograph or sketch a rummage sale in your community. Compare it to the sale in Minetta Good’s painting. How are they alike and different?
 

Resources

 

During the Great Depression, muralist and printmaker Minetta Good was employed by the WPA. Born in New York City in 1895, she lived there and in nearby New Jersey her whole life. She studied art with portraitist Cecilia Beaux and, at the Art Students League, with F. Luis Mora. She exhibited her work with the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors and at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. She was fifty-one years old when she died.

Minetta Good
At the Country Auction, 1935
Oil on canvas
Newark Museum Collection, 49.153
Gift of Miss Dorothea Merisch 1949

 

In At the Country Auction, Good depicts a family near Middle Valley, New Jersey, who are selling their possessions for income. Stylistically, her art resembles that of such Regionalist painters as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. Like them, she painted humble people in everyday life activities.

 

 

Dorothea Lange
Migrant Mother and Children, 1936
Black and white photograph
Farm Security Administration Office of War Information Photograph Collection. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Washington D.C.

 
See 18b in Picturing America Educators Resource Book http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide/English/En... for further information and discussion ideas for Dorothea Lange and her photograph Migrant Mother. 

Three-dimensional image of Newark Museum teaching collection pottery
 

Additional Resources

Selected EDSITEment Lesson Plans

 
 
Everything in Its Right Place: An Introduction to Composition in Painting   
Lesson 1: Shaping the View: Composition Basics 
Lesson 2: Repeat After Me: Repetition in the Visual Arts 
Lesson 3: Follow the Leader: Line in the Visual Arts
 
Depression-era Photographs: Worth a Thousand Words
 
Dust Bowl Days
 
Family and Friendship in Quilts
 
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: The Inner Chapters
 
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: Verbal Pictures
 
FDR: Fireside Chats, the New Deal, and Eleanor
 

 

 

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication does not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Arts.