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Homeschool Days: 2024-2025

Artists in Focus

Join us for a monthly exploration of art and time from the 1600s through the 1800s! Students (ages 5-14) will closely study the lives of artists and the significant events influencing them and their choice of art medium. Each 75-minute lesson is interactive and includes a related art activity. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to view the world through various artistic styles.

Parent attendance is optional. Review our FAQs, which cover arrival and even co-op questions.

Registration: Accepting registrants for Spring sessions HERE.

Location: Mack Building (on the campus of Bob Jones University)

Fees per Lesson: Children–$9; adults–$3

Event fees are non-refundable. Adults may choose either to attend with their child(ren) or leave after student check-in for the 75-minute lesson.

 

To further your learning at home, use these M&G activity sheets.

Elementary School Lessons (K5-5th grade)

Thursday at 9:30AM and 2PM

Friday at 9:30AM, Noon, and 2PM

Middle School Lessons (6th-8th grade)

Friday at 9:30AM, Noon, and 2PM

 

Spring Topics:

February 6-7

Claude Monet, Chief Impressionist

March 13-14

Berthe Morisot, Admired Artist

April 3-4

Vincent Van Gogh, Impasto Pioneer

Kids Create! 2025

 

 

Kids Create! Summer Art Day Camp

 

Elements of Art

For first-time kindergartners–offered all three weeks

Introduce your little one to art and creativity through M&G’s specially designed kindergarten camp focused on the Elements of Art–with a hint of the ancient. Your beginner will enjoy multiple art projects, age-appropriate lessons, interactive games, and snacks while learning about line, shape, color, and texture. This 5-day morning camp will not only expose young starters to a structured learning environment but also inspire and capture their imagination!

Note: K5 campers must turn 5 years old by September 1, 2025

Fee (includes daily instruction, art supplies, and snack): Museum Members: $95 | Non-Members: $99

 

Exploring the Ancient

For rising1st—6th grade (ages 6-12)–offered all three weeks 

The Pyramids of Giza, Homer’s Odyssey, and paper—these were all invented centuries before the birth of Christ! Travel back in time as we learn about the unique customs, symbols, and artforms of four fascinating ancient civilizations: Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome! Like archaeologists, we’ll uncover mosaics, paintings, and ceramics highlighting each civilization. Then, we’ll swap our excavational tools for paintbrushes and pencils to create our own artwork inspired by these ancient cultures that helped shape our modern world.

Fee (includes daily instruction, art supplies, and snack): Museum Members: $95 | Non-Members: $99

 

An Excavator’s Adventure

For 6th-8th grade (ages 12-14)–offered weeks of June 9 and 16

Building on the elementary camp emphasis, middle school artisans will uncover the fascinating finds about everyday life, fashion, beliefs, and funerary customs of ancient Egypt. In addition to creating a signature cartouche with hieroglyphs, campers will use a variety of art media to transform their own portrait image into an ancient Egyptian wall painting.

Fee: $125 (includes daily instruction, art supplies, and snack)

 

Register for camp HERE.

Find answers to parents’ and grandparents’ Frequently Asked Questions.

Location: Bob Jones Academy (on the campus of Bob Jones University)

 

Time: 9:30AM — Noon, daily

 

Camp Weeks for 2025:

  • June 2-6
  • June 9-13
  • June 16-20

On Fridays:

Each week of camp culminates on Friday with a special speaker and an art exhibition showcasing the campers’ creative, beautiful works of art. Students, parents, and families are invited to attend the Friday Art Exhibition and Reception at the end of Kids Create! each week.

Time: Fridays at 11 AM (June 6, 13, and 20)

Location: Academy Auditorium, campus of Bob Jones University

M&G Objects on Loan

Every year M&G loans works from its collection to participate in various exhibitions around the world. Peruse the list below and consider visiting the exhibitions to learn more about the world of Old Masters and the museum field. Plus, you can view portions of M&G’s collection on campus here.

 

Madonna of the Lake Marco d’Oggiono

North Carolina Museum of Art

October 8, 2022 – August 1, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Esther Accusing Haman Jan Victors

The Jewish Museum

March 7, 2025 – August 10, 2025

North Carolina Museum of Art

September 20, 2025 – March 8, 2026

 

 

Museum on the Move

M&G loves opening up the world of art through our unique Museum on the Move program by bringing museum learning to your classroom! Our educators are available to come to your classroom to teach and bring all the related materials for each lesson and arts-based STEAM units. Or you can choose to use digital Museum on the Move lessons in your classroom or remotely.

 

In-Person Lessons:

These 30- to 60-minute lessons are not only customized to accommodate individual classroom needs, but also integrate art with the core subject areas, and meet the national and South Carolina state standards. Each lesson is taught by our experienced and skilled museum educators, who bring everything needed for the interactive lesson with them. See what educators say about this program!

For a list of in-classroom lesson topics in PDF, click here.

For a copy of the standards utilized in each lesson, click here.

To schedule an educator to come to your classroom: contact Anna Hamrick, M&G’s Museum on the Move Coordinator via this scheduling form, or at ahamrick@bju.edu, or 864.770.1331. She will coordinate fees and educator availability.

 

If you’d like to understand a little more detail about how Museum on the Move works, listen to this February 2021 podcast about the program, featuring our education staff:

 

 

Museum on the Move is part of M&G’s Arts Encounter K-12 programming.

 

Object of the Month: February 2025

Head of Christ

Oil on panel, signed and dated lower right: A Scheffer 1849

Ary Scheffer

Dutch, active in France, 1795-1858

Ary Scheffer first studied art with his parents, later studying at the Amsterdam Drawing Academy. When his father died, Scheffer moved with his family to study in Paris with the neoclassical painter Pierre Guerin which set Scheffer on the road to Romanticism. A year later, he debuted at the Royal Academy’s Salon Exhibition. Five years after the move, he won his first medal which garnered him patronage by a supporter of the royal family.

The French would call this work an étude—a study made of a model to reference and work out details for a later painting. As such, collectors consider them valuable works. A glance at his oeuvre (body of work) reveals that Scheffer uses this model repeatedly for the Christ figure in several of his works largely during his religious period at the end of his career. Dated 1849, M&G’s study likely influenced later works, such as The Temptation of Christ (1854) in the National Gallery of Victoria and perhaps Christ Weeping over Jerusalem (1849) in the Victoria & Albert Museum (which he repeated in an 1851 version at the Walters Art Museum).

Scheffer’s popularity did extend to England but with a marked division in how the British received his works. The members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, just at the start of their own movement (1848), varied in their reactions: William Holman Hunt did not approve, unlike Thomas Woolner. In fact, Hunt convinced D.G. Rossetti that Scheffer’s works were “worthless” (Morris 180).

The Royal Academy in London criticized nearly all the technical aspects of his work, especially his coloring, possibly feeling vulnerable from the acclaim that he was receiving in the industrial North. The growth in the middle class through textile factories in cities such as Manchester and Liverpool made art collecting a mark of affluence and social status. These “barons” were already comfortable with Europe due to product exportation; the importation of ideas from there was a natural consequence. Scheffer was championed by the author Elizabeth Gaskell and collected by the “intensely pious John Heugh” (Morris 186). John Ruskin called him “one of the heads of the mud sentiment school,” but admitted that Scheffer “does draw and feel very beautifully and deeply” (Morris 180).

So if technical excellence was not the draw, what was? Edward Morris states that “it was above all spiritual and emotional exaltation particularly in expression that Scheffer’s English friends admired in his art” (176).  This Head of Christ evidences the coloring that drew criticism: the palette is limited to creams and browns with little distinction between Christ’s clothing and His skin. But Christ’s face is what draws attention. Kindness, introspection, firmness of purpose, along with a far-seeing gaze, create the impression that the God-man is on an eternal mission. “Emotional idealism” can easily cross the line into sentimentality, especially in religious works. However, the appeal to sentiment often leads to contemplation, a result that all artists desire. And anything more than a passing glance at Scheffer’s Head of Christ compels the viewer to ponder the Savior of the world.

 

Dr. Karen Rowe Jones, M&G board member

 

Work Cited:

Morris, Edward. French Art in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Yale UP, New Haven. 2005

 

Old Testament Characters: Pietro Negroni, called Il Giovane Zingaro

Roughly the same size, these beautifully rendered panels painted by Pietro Negroni most likely came from an altarpiece in a convent church in the Calabrian city of Cosenza.

Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem

Bringing the Ark to Jerusalem

Peter Paul Rubens (and studio)

Below the image, click play to listen.

 

Preparing to Depart for Canaan: Leandro Bassano, called Leandro da Ponte

This vibrant painting depicting Abraham and his family’s departure for Canaan features many of the details that the Bassano family were skilled in painting.

Esau and Jacob Presented to Isaac

Esau and Jacob Presented to Isaac

Benjamin West, P.R.A.

Below the image, click play to listen.

 

You can learn more about the entire series by West and M&G’s significant collection from the series HERE.

Object of the Month: January 2025

Madonna and Child with Angels

Tempera and oil on panel

Master of the Greenville Tondo

Umbrian, active late 15th century

This mystery painting was once attributed to the young Umbrian, Raphael as possibly one of his early works (Giuseppe Fiocco, 1937), which could “aid in the studies of the formation of Raphael’s personality” (Mario Salmi). Then, it was suggested as characteristic of Raphael’s teacher in Umbria, Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino (William Suida, 1941 and Wilhelm von Bode, 1921). But it was the great historian Federico Zeri in 1959 and later followed by Everett Fahy, former Metropolitan Museum of Art curator and Director of the Frick, who suggested a different old master entirely.

This tondo (Italian for “round”) is puzzling, but understanding the cultural context of patronage, traditional artistic training, and the workshop setting can help explain some of the mystery.

In the Middle Ages through the early Renaissance, workshop practice was the only common form of artistic instruction in Italy beginning with the religious orders, monasteries, and convents. The Trades (sculptor, mason, architect) were taught from father to son or from an older family member to a younger. Formal apprenticeships emerged in the 13th century in the context of the craft guild system when workshop or bound apprenticeship became a fully regulated system for lay artists. Then, during the 15th century, the dislike for the guild system’s restrictions and process led to an adapted concept of artistic training, called the Academy. The specific training process for artists is further developed in the article about M&G’s painting, A Sibyl by female Old Master, Ginevra Cantofoli.

Throughout all of these training methods to become a master of one’s own workshop, imitation was the most important component of artistic training. Master painters employed a workshop of assistants to copy or paint in his style and to help meet the incoming demand of commissions by patrons. These points are critical to understanding why it is difficult to attribute a specific artistic personality to today’s enduring Old Master paintings. Besides, most painters well into the late 1400s and early 1500s did not autograph their finished works, and finding the original documents commissioning paintings can be challenging.

However, when the artist is unknown, yet there is an entire group of works that look to be by the same master’s hand, the experts (as in this case) will suggest a pseudonym—create a name for the artist after the place or location where his best or most representative work resides. Zeri and Fahy chose M&G’s painting as the namesake for the painter, “The Master of the Greenville Tondo,” meaning this tondo in Greenville, SC.

According to historian Carrie Baker, this painter, subject, and style reflect the “prevailing visual tastes of the period.” Workshop practice utilized multiple assistants and collaborative work to fill commissions that looked like the master’s hand. The assistants were all skilled artisans but working for the key master. Not knowing the assistants’ names isn’t an issue as this was their occupation: to reproduce works at the request of clients in the consistent style of the master to meet customer expectations. Today, we can photograph and print our favorite originals, but then artists could only copy and repeat. Works like M&G’s Madonna and Child with Angels reflect a popular subject and shape of the period, and providing paintings like M&G’s at a client’s request was the master’s way of “positioning . . . his workshop at an economic advantage.”

Many of the masters and their assistants were truly “Renaissance” men—able to tackle the design of many things, not just paintings but manuscripts, reliquary, sculpture, fabrics, architectural features, etc. The anonymous artist as Baker notes, “was probably an active participant of a working-class system of many trades.” The artist is unknown, but by comparing similar characteristics, experts have connected at least 32 works as having come from this same artist’s hand found in places including Pancole, Italy, the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg in Florida, Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Estensi Gallery in Modena, Italy.

Regardless of this painting and many others not being attributed to a specific, known personality—such as a respected influencer like Perugino or a major name of the Renaissance like Raphael, this master’s work was just as valuable in shaping Umbria’s artistic identity. And, more than that, our painting is shaping the estimation of our own community through the designation “Master of the Greenville Tondo”—bringing honor and recognition to the city of Greenville throughout the world where other works by this unknown master are displayed.

 

Erin R. Jones, Executive Director

 

Published 2025