Resources for Teachers

Looking for resources to use with your students in class? We offer a range of materials to enhance your lessons.

Look out for the colour code to know if the activity suits your classroom: Elementary Secondary

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Be amazed by the discoveries you can make when you look for longer at art. Look carefully together at these paintings with Educator Andrea Gumpert.

Slow Look at Rembrandt’s Heroine

A Slow Look at Rembrandt’s Heroine (1632/33)

Elementary

Slow Look at Snow II

Video of Slow Look at Snow II

A Slow Look at Lawren S. Harris’s Snow II (1915)

Elementary

Slow Look at Petroushka

A Slow Look at Paraskeva Clark’s Petroushka (1937)

Elementary

Post-Visit Activity

Elementary Secondary

In every visit to the National Gallery of Canada, students develop the skills of looking and thinking critically about artworks. Continue this exercise back in the classroom with artworks nearby.

Download the activity

Virtual School Programs

Elementary Secondary

Virtual school programs are live webinars that connect students from across Canada with artworks in the Gallery’s collection.

Explore programs

Framing Nature: A Photography Activity

Elementary

Grab your camera and join us as we adapt lessons learned from the Group of Seven's paintings to help you see your world through a new lens.

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A woman painting with watercolours in front of her laptop.

Online Studio

Secondary

Explore various art techniques with Online Studio. Our workshops feature artists from across the country, working in a range of mediums.

Watch the recorded workshops

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Countess Anna Ivanova Tolstaya (detail), 1796, oil on canvas.

Inspired Words: Spotlight on Women Authors and Artists

Secondary

Listen to leading authors speak about key artworks in the Gallery's collection.

Listen to the audio stops

Deanna Bowen, The Black Canadians (after Cooke), 2023, installed at the National Gallery of Canada, 2023.

Deanna Bowen's The Black Canadians (after Cooke)

Secondary

In The Black Canadians (after Cooke), artist Deanna Bowen expands her family history into a broader examination of discrimination in North America over the centuries.

Learn more about the artwork

Watch videos that explore the work

Restoration and Conservation

Secondary

Learn more about some of the team’s exciting projects, and follow a few of the objects that are keeping them busy in the lab.

Find out more

A Botanical Audio Tour Through the Gallery Collection

Secondary

Explore masterworks from the Gallery’s European and Canadian collections with an award-winning gardener and art historian.

Start the tour

Vincent Van Gogh, Iris, 1890, oil on cardboard, later thinned and mounted on canvas.

Understanding Art

Secondary

Learn about key artists and works of art in the Gallery collection with NGC Educator Béatrice Djahanbin.

Watch videos

External Resources

Art Canada Institute teacher resource guides

Elementary Secondary

Following our provinces’ education curricula, the teacher resource guides provide multidisciplinary learning activities that reveal how Canadian art powerfully reflects our world so we can better understand it.

Learn more