For Your Students

Welcome aboard! Inside the Skirball's award-winning destination Noah's Ark at the Skirball—featuring animals crafted from repurposed everyday objects—students learn about the value of community and collaboration by engaging in hands-on learning experiences such as storytelling, music making, building and exploring, and caring for the Ark's inhabitants.

Be a “Build a Better World” school!—Grade 1 and 2 teachers, take part in activities aimed at caring for communities in Los Angeles and beyond. Check the “Noah’s Ark Build a Better World” box on the online registration form to be eligible for a special service-learning project designed to foster empathy, collaboration, and civic responsibility on your Noah’s Ark school tour. Select schools will receive an in-class follow-up workshop led by a Skirball educator.

In partnership with Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, teachers have the option to apply for a mini-grant of $200 to complete a community service campaign in which students identify a local community problem, develop a plan for a solution, and take action.

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Through storytelling, dramatic play, and exploration of objects in the Museum's core exhibition, students gain a greater understanding of Jewish culture. Journeying back in time, they travel a route to ancient Israel, become merchants at a trading post along the Silk Road to China, visit fifteenth-century Spain, and move into a crowded house in an Eastern European village. Each class completes an art project inspired by Patricia Polacco’s book The Keeping Quilt.

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The award-winning Boxtales Theatre Company presents an original performance drawn from myths, stories, and fairytales from around the world. Students will engage their imaginations and creativity in an immersive storytelling experience that encourages compassion and resourcefulness.

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Las Colibrí, or “The Hummingbirds,” have a passion for music and girl power! This all-female mariachi band features instrumentalists and vocalists who blend their talents into lovely vocal harmonies, unique arrangements, and updated interpretations of traditional songs. Students will experience a fun, modern twist on a musical tradition rooted in Mexican, Indigenous, and European cultures!

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Organizations with after-school programs are invited to register for facilitated, interactive visits to Noah’s Ark at the Skirball. Tours are available on select Tuesdays afternoons, during public Museum hours, throughout the school year. Each program includes educator-led activities along with exploration time aboard Noah’s Ark. 

Schools, camps, and organizations with summer programs are invited to board Noah’s Ark at the Skirball for an interactive tour. Young visitors become a part of the Ark’s community through hands-on learning experiences such as storytelling, music making, building and exploring, and caring for the Ark's inhabitants.

This interactive program celebrates Los Angeles’s incredible cultural diversity and the universal values of welcoming others, teaching and learning, and caring for the world around us. Students make music together, discuss their own families’ cultural celebrations around a Jewish holiday table, explore major life events through everyday objects, and create a take-home project related to community service.

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Students discover the art and science of architecture by exploring the dynamic indoor and outdoor spaces of the expansive Skirball campus, designed by internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie. A take-home architecture sketchbook helps students capture the lines, measurements, and textures of the Skirball's unique campus. Students then act as architects and civic planners as they engage in a collaborative building project.

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Students explore stories of people who have come to America from around the world by examining artifacts from a variety of cultures and time periods. Through immersive storytelling, students re-enact the American immigrant experience at the turn of the twentieth century by undergoing the inspection process at Ellis Island, attending public school in 1908, and searching for an occupation in a bustling New York City neighborhood.

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Read about one classroom’s Americans and Their Family Stories experience

Who tells the stories of our cities? Who makes the art of our communities? Through two Skirball exhibitions, students will explore these questions and discover the intertwined histories of Mexico and Los Angeles. Students will learn about the iconic paintings, photos, sculptures, and murals of Mexican Renaissance artists, such as José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, in Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico, and engage with photographs of contemporary LA street art in Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in LA. The tour includes an artist-led workshop in which students create their own visual stories of LA.

Another Promised Land and Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day are part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than seventy cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor of PST: LA/LA is Bank of America. Major support for Another Promised Land is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

MAJOR SUPPORT FOR ANOTHER PROMISED LAND IS PROVIDED BY THE GETTY FOUNDATION.​

The award-winning Boxtales Theatre Company presents an original performance drawn from myths, stories, and fairytales from around the world. Students will engage their imaginations and creativity in an immersive storytelling experience that encourages compassion and resourcefulness.

Learn more about the performers

Two dynamic performance groups come together to share stories, dance, and play music from American Indian traditions of the West. World-champion hoop dancer Terry L. Goedel, a Yakama/Tulalip Indian, brings to life the story of an eagle through the art, sport, and ceremony of hoop dance. Toveema, featuring performers of Tongva and Kumeyaay descent, illuminates the cultural origins of the Los Angeles Basin and beyond with interactive song, dance, and storytelling.

This tropical Afro-Latin band shares the history and rhythms of Angola, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and beyond. With their name meaning “to remove worries,” Quitapenas strives to make you feel carefree and dance! Students will be invited to learn Afro-Latin beats and to understand the connection between different traditional rhythms and contemporary music.

Who tells the stories of our cities? Who makes the art of our communities? Through two Skirball exhibitions, students will explore these questions and discover the intertwined histories of Mexico and Los Angeles. Students will learn about the iconic paintings, photos, sculptures, and murals of Mexican Renaissance artists, such as José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, in Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico, and engage with photographs of contemporary LA street art in Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in LA. The tour includes an artist-led workshop in which students create their own visual stories of LA.

Another Promised Land and Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day are part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than seventy cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor of PST: LA/LA is Bank of America. Major support for Another Promised Land is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

MAJOR SUPPORT FOR ANOTHER PROMISED LAND IS PROVIDED BY THE GETTY FOUNDATION.​

At the Skirball’s Archaeology Discovery Center and outdoor archaeological dig site, modeled after an ancient town discovered in the Near East, students use authentic tools of the trade to excavate “artifacts,” collect and analyze findings, and present hypotheses about the history, commerce, religion, and cultural practices of people from the Iron Age. Students examine ancient artifacts and replicas to make connections between life in the ancient world and today.

Note: Dig activities may be moved indoors due to weather.

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With a mission to “make the world dance,” local band Buyepongo draws heavily from African American and Latino musical cultures, hip-hop, and the “roots” music of the Caribbean. Students will go on an exhilarating exploration of a distinctively diverse LA sound, grooving to the driving conga beats, pulsing bass, and dynamic horn section of this vibrant band.

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Culture Shock LA, a hip-hop dance and music company, invites students to see dance and culture in new ways, cultivating self-worth, dignity, and respect for all people. This energetic and inspiring performance introduces the rich history of hip-hop while promoting a vision of community, inclusivity, and connection—and getting students on their feet to join the fun!

Learn more about the artist

Who tells the stories of our cities? Who makes the art of our communities? Through two Skirball exhibitions, students will explore these questions and discover the intertwined histories of Mexico and Los Angeles. Students will learn about the iconic paintings, photos, sculptures, and murals of Mexican Renaissance artists, such as José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, in Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico, and engage with photographs of contemporary LA street art in Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in LA. The tour includes an artist-led workshop in which students create their own visual stories of LA.

Another Promised Land and Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day are part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than seventy cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor of PST: LA/LA is Bank of America. Major support for Another Promised Land is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

MAJOR SUPPORT FOR ANOTHER PROMISED LAND IS PROVIDED BY THE GETTY FOUNDATION.​

This program will introduce short-format films profiling women and girls from around the world who are fighting for gender equality. From a fashion collective who journey from Stockholm to Johannesburg, to a rugby player in Mumbai, to a computer coder in Tanzania, these powerful women and girls are standing up for their rights, expressing themselves, and helping to improve the lives of those around them. After the screening, speakers from various disciplines will discuss the importance of access and equality in our global fight for women’s rights.

This series is presented in partnership with SIMA Classroom.

What does it mean to be a good citizen? How do we make our communities better? These questions lie at the heart of the four short films presented in this interactive day of civic engagement. Focusing on stories of citizen journalists in Haiti, street artists around the world, and protesters and immigrants in the United States, this program will include films, speakers, and activities that ask participants to think about what they can do to help improve their own communities.

This series is presented in partnership with SIMA Classroom.

In this high school residency, one class of students will embark on an immersive investigation of street art and its rich traditions across Los Angeles and Mexico. Two Skirball exhibitions—Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico and Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in LA, both presented as a part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA—will serve as an entry point and framework for this residency. Guided by a teaching artist, students will explore the contemporary relevance of street art and design in our city, creating original artwork that shares their stories of life in LA. The residency concludes with a dynamic and participatory gathering at the Skirball, where students’ works of art will serve as catalysts for dialogue about artistic process and civic values.

Teachers must have full administrative support and be involved in the planning and implementation process.