Art-making and engaging in conversations about art helps to develop important skills (like collaboration, creativity and visual literacy) that can be used across all disciplines. 

In our work with students, we focus on Thomas Cole’s work as an artist, writer, and early environmentalist. We believe that concentrating on these three identities helps students understand that myriad worldviews, tools, and identities are useful in understanding, communicating in, and creating change in the world.

We use Thomas Cole’s artwork as a jumping off point to have complex conversations about environmental science, technology, history, ideas related to progress, and our relationships to land.

Honing our skills as artists, writers, and environmentalists allow us to become better thinkers, communicators, observers, collaborators, and makers of change. We believe that memorizing dates and names is less useful than understanding history and our world today through discussion and creation; for students, the experience of seeing, making, and talking about art will aid them for the rest of their lives, in and out of school.

Thomas Cole: Artist, Writer, and Early Environmentalist

Best for: All Classes, Grades K-12

How can we use many tools to express our ideas?

This tour is highly student-centered, incorporating group discussion, movement, and inquiry with contextual information about Thomas Cole and his creative process, the Industrial Revolution, and life in the early 1800s. In this tour, students learn about Thomas Cole’s work as an artist, writer, and early environmentalist as they tour through the historic house that he lived in and the studio where he painted for over seven years.

Tour: 45 minutes

The Creative Process: Tour & Hands-On Activity

Best for: Art and Art History Classes, Grades K-12

How do we create art from our experiences in nature?  

This tour focuses on how Thomas Cole created art, from closely observing and sketching nature, deciding on what to leave in and take out, to mixing his own paints and creating his compositions. Students will also learn about the lives of artists Sarah and Emily Cole, the Hudson River School of Art, and tour the historic house, kitchen garden, and painting studios. Optional: Students can engage in hands-on art-making, writing, and environmental action activities. 

Tour: 45 minutes

Tour with activity: 75 minutes

Hands-On Activities

Classes may select a hands-on activity with our Creative Process: Tour & Hands-On Activity package. Our full list of activity descriptions and curriculum alignments are available here: 2024 Hands-On Activities.

• Creating Your Essay on American Scenery: What is the American Landscape?
• Sketch, Remember & Create
• Botanical Drawing & the Art of Emily Cole 
• Environmental Writing
• Color Study: Diagram of Contrasts 
• Exhibition-Related Activity: Painting Human Presence in the Landscape

Contemporary Art & Landscape: Tour & Hands-On Activity

Best for: Art and Art History Classes, Grades K-12

What is a landscape?

Through close-looking of works by Thomas Cole and contemporary artists, students will explore what defines landscape art. This fall, explore work by contemporary Indigenous artists in our special exhibitions, Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape and Alan Michelson: Prophetstown. This tour will give students an opportunity to learn about how artists working today approach making art about land. Students will also tour the historic house and painting studios. Optional: Students can engage in a hands-on activity where they can make their own land art.

Tour: 45 minutes

Tour with activity: 75 minutes

School visits are available Wednesday-Friday, between 9am-4pm.

$10/K-12 student

$5/student for additional activity fee (if selected)

Public school students in Columbia and Greene County receive free admission

For college/university rates, please click here.

Please note that school group rates are only available when scheduled in advance. If you would like to schedule a visit, click the button below.

Sarah Cole and her brother Thomas both grew up to be artists. Read the Thomas Cole for Kids story, Picturing America.

Pre-Visit Materials 

Grades K – 4

We teamed up with beloved children’s book author and illustrator Hudson Talbott to present Thomas Cole’s illustrated story online for free. The story introduces young children to Thomas Cole, the 19th-century artist and founder of America’s first major art movement. The story follows Cole’s ups and downs as an economic migrant displaced by the Industrial Revolution in England who fell in love with the American wilderness and advocated for the preservation of this nation’s landscapes.

Grades 5-12

Once you have booked your visit, please consider downloading our “Pre-Visit Packet” which orients students grades 5-12 to Thomas Cole, his home, and the ideas that mattered to him.

To learn about our in-classroom educational programming, please visit Teacher Resources.