Lesson Overview
This lesson brings Nebraska Reading, Writing, Social Studies, and National Visual Arts Standards together. It focuses on how art can document and record information about a place. While using William Henry Jackson’s Pawnee Indian Village, photograph and painting, students contribute to discussions and identify how an artist elicits a viewer’s response. After analyzing this information, students use information gained to create a meaningful display of their own environment.

Art Exemplar
Title: Pawnee Indian Village
Artist: William Henry Jackson (1889 - 1975)
Medium: photography
Date: 1871

Art Exemplar
Title: Pawnee Indian Village
Artist: William Henry Jackson (1889 - 1975)
Medium: painting
Date: 1932

Objectives
• Students will compare and contrast the Jackson photograph and painting by participating in group discussion and describing how the images communicate ideas, experiences and stories, and elicit viewer response.
• Students will make inferences from the Jackson photograph, painting, and historical information (events, culture, time and place, and mood) to contribute information and ideas during group discussion.
• Students will identify information necessary and inform others of their surroundings by creating visual documentation of those surroundings and producing a display.
• Students will conclude how time, place, culture, and art have influenced the choices they made for their own school environment display by reviewing why visual documentation is important.
Procedure

1. With students in pairs or small groups, have them talk about a place they have visited.
2. Ask, “Is there another way to explain about a place?” The ideas of visual images of drawing, painting, and most likely photographs will come up.
3. Why would someone want a photograph or a souvenir of a place? The idea of learning by looking at images to give information of the place helps with connection to that place.
4. Background of the artist: William H. Jackson
   • Jackson was born in Keesville, New York and right after his high school graduation began his career as a photographer and painter. Jackson is best known as the dean of American landscape photographers. In 1886, he went west traveling through Nebraska on his way to California. On his return trip in 1867 he decided to set up a studio in Omaha. Soon after in 1870, he joined the Hayden Survey Team and worked as their official photographer. While traveling through Wyoming he kept a sketch book and produced the first photographs of the area around Yellowstone. Jackson returned every year, producing a body of memorable landscape images that helped in getting the location designated a national park.
   • Jackson finally retired in 1924, but in the 1930's he was selected by congress to paint scenes of his trips west. Most of Jackson's paintings were based on earlier sketches and photographs created during his travels in Nebraska from 1866 to 1871. The photograph by Jackson in the Nebraska Art Collection was taken in 1871 of a Pawnee village on Beaver Creek near Genoa, Nebraska. The painting of the same scene was probably done in 1932.
5. Have the students view the two images of the Pawnee village. The students will be told that both the photograph and the painting were done by Jackson.
6. Have the students express what is similar / different between the photograph and painting and record the responses on a chart.
7. Give history about what the artist was saying to inform the viewer about the Pawnee village. Include what emotions may come from one or both of the images. Explain the artist was commissioned to take photographs of the Plains in the 1860-1870’s and then later was asked to paint the images in the 1930’s. His job was to document or make a record of the Plains. The paintings were documents also of what he had already seen.
Activities
1. Tell the students they have been “commissioned,” as artists, to create images for a school brochure that will be given to new students coming to our community / neighborhood. They will need to decide what information a new student would need to get a clear idea about the school.
2. Brainstorm what would be important if they were going to another school. Use this discussion to help with the types of images the students will need.
3. Give students time to go sketch or photograph images.
4. Students should verbally or literally explain which images they have chosen and why the images need to be in the school brochure.
5. Display the images and written information.

Conclusion
1. Review how artists are commissioned to create art and document information.
2. Discuss other ways artists document information. Relate to many sources-newspapers, magazines, television, Internet, encyclopedia (print or CD), and so on.
3. Review why visual documentation is needed. Use and add to the information you had recorded during the teaching.
Related Activities
1. Language Arts
   1. Make a publication about your surroundings.
   2. William H. Jackson liked to show the big picture. What is the big picture of the Pawnee village? Have the students write their version of what is going on in the photograph or painting.
2. Social Studies
   1. Expand project to document home, neighborhood, or community.
   2. Make a visual enhanced map of the surroundings.
   3. Many cities and towns have photographs of their community. Use those images and see if the students can find those same places now.
   4. Learn more about the Pawnee culture.
   5. Learn more about the different Native American nations on the plains. Find visual artwork to go with the nations.
3. Art
   1. Learn more about William H. Jackson and other works he created.
   2. You may want explore other artists that have been important in capturing the images of the West. Speak of the ones before photography, Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. Then discuss those who used photography and /or another medium such as Solomon Butcher.
   3. Use the photograph and painting as exemplars during the unit.
   4. Learn of the architecture of the earth lodges.
   5. History of photography and photographs, how does a camera work; how are images developed.
   6. Bring in photographers or visit one.
4. Science
   1. Explore use of natural resources in the culture.