Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,
Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,
Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,
Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,
Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,
Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,
Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute
 Learning & Engagement Staff at the NGA's Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute,

“Across the Nation” From Connecticut to Iowa

In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, the New Britain Museum of American Art is partnering with the National Gallery of Art for their “Across the Nation” initiative, which brings key works of art to regional museums across the United States in 2025 and 2026. 

The received two works on loan: Robert Seldon Duncanson’s Fruit Still Life (c. 1849) and Winslow Homer’s East Hampton Beach, Long Island (1874). 

As part of the “Across the Nation” program, staff from the Learning and Engagement team and 10 teachers from across Connecticut had the opportunity to attend the National Gallery of Art Midwestern and Eastern Teacher Institute in August 2025. Focusing on teaching the whole child through art, the Institute took place at the Figge Museum in Davenport, Iowa, in collaboration with museum educators from the Figge, the National Gallery of Art, the Flint Institute of Art in Flint, Michigan, and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Teachers came from Illinois, Iowa, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Michigan to participate in the Institute, connecting with a national community of innovative educators.

Over four days, the 80+ participants engaged with speakers from Harvard’s Project Zero, the National Gallery of Art, a nationally renowned portraitist, and several workshops led by teaching artists, including one taught by Francis Estrada. Associate Director of Learning and Engagement. Francis’s workshop gave teachers the opportunity to consider how food can tell us about cultures and traditions. Teachers thought about how they can share or express their personal history, cultural, or familial traditions through memories around food/meals. Using the history of the Haitian soup joumou and the Figge’s Haitian art collection as inspiration, they made connections to how the arts (visual/culinary) tie in to empathetic learning.

This was one of two regional Mini-Institutes for Educators, hosted by partner museums in “Across the Nation,” a program bringing masterpieces from the national collection to museums across the country. The learning retreat aimed to reinvigorate teachers with fresh approaches from the school year ahead and modeled how to use close looking and discussion strategies to engage students with works of art in new ways.