Patrice Butler, art teacher at Pine Bush Elementary School for the past three and a half years and not long into teaching remotely was inspired by the original Getty Challenge given by the J. Paul Getty Museum as an assignment for her fourth and fifth grade students. The original challenge was simply for people to recreate their favorite art using common objects found in their house.

“I wanted to give my students something fun to do as their first official project at home. It was also something they could possibly involve their families in, as many of my students did.” Butler continued to explain the assignment’s specifics, “It was pretty wide open. The parameters I set were that I asked fourth graders to focus on works of art that could be found on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website and fifth graders to focus on those found on the Getty Museum’s site. Although I gave guidelines, I added if they felt strongly about another work of art not featured at one of those museums that they could feel free to use that.  I really wanted to make sure that they had fun with this project, it is such a stressful and uncertain time right now, this was just a little escape that I could direct them to. The only real rules were to pick an existing work of art and recreate it using items that could be found around their homes.” 

Other art teachers have completed similar lessons including Jessica Torres at Pakanasink Elementary and Kelsey Skudder at Circleville Elementary after Butler shared the idea. Also, “After my slideshow was shared on the district website I learned Diane Trad, Pine Bush High School art teacher had some of her students participate. She commented my fourth and fifth graders set the bar very high for her high school students!”

Scrolling through the slideshow highlighting some of the submitted projects proves how creative students are and Butler adds, “I was honestly blown away by their work! So many creative choices were made from using cereal, to Uno cards and American Girl dolls, to name a few. I am so proud of my students! I made many comments to them about the creativity of their choices and attention to detail.” 

Finding a highly successful assignment for the remote classroom means it may actually have to be revised to be brought back to a traditional classroom. “At home, the students have free range of many materials and time, allowing them the flexibility to push their creativity. I absolutely plan to assign this lesson in the future and may assign it to be completed at home with a photo of their work brought in so we can critique it as a class.”

“As challenging of a time that we are in right now, I feel very lucky for my students and I to have access to things like Chromebooks and virtual classrooms to keep us connected. It has given me the chance to push boundaries and try projects that may be more challenging to achieve in a traditional classroom setting. This project is one highlight of what my students have been creating in these past few weeks, but all of my students have really been giving it their all coming up with alternative solutions to materials and results to the assignments. I look forward to beginning to have Google Meets with my classes to give us the opportunity to see each other and share what we have been creating,” said Butler.