March 1, 2016
HIS 301
Bowers Museum
Bowers Museum has been a well talked about locations amongst my coworkers and
a place I have wanted to visit for quite sometime before starting this course. I decided this
would be a perfect opportunity to finally visit and also look at this as not only a learning
opportunity, but also, a teaching opportunity. Although, many of my peers talked about this
museum, none had actually visited, so the comments I had heard of this place were very
vague and mainly comments like it is a good cultural museum. Regardless, I was excited to
visit the site for myself which did not disappoint. The museum offers many galleries and a
garden. Among the exhibitions included are: Spirits and Headhunters: Art of the Pacific
Islands, Ancient Arts of China: A 5000 Year Legacy, and California Legacies: Missions and
Ranchos. There is also a Kidseum related to Bowers Museum which is all interactive and I
found to be very entertaining. The museum is not based on solely one culture, but various
cultures.
Before visiting the Bowers Museum, I would like to have my students first learn
about the history of Bowers Museum and how it came to be. The property was owned by
Charles and Ada Bowers who donated the land to Santa Ana. The building was constructed
after the death of Ada Bowers in 1931 but remained closed due to the great depression.
Bowers Museum is a Mission styled building that opened in 1936. The museum later
adopted the Kidseum in 1994, which is is an interactive childrens museum and learning
center.
Ada and Charles Bowers
learning about the California missions, presidios, and the fathers of the missions. Also since
this is an art museum, I would like to have various art slides related to art that they might
find at the museum and have the students group them by style and put them into categories
they believe they belong to. I would put this museum fieldtrip appropriate for fourth and
fifth graders under my history section. This is beneficial for students to learn about
A lot of the times, when coming to a museum for a school field trip, the tours can
sometimes begin late. In any case, the students before starting the tour would be put into
two separate groups and play a game of jeopardy with the information that has and will be
presented to them at the museum. A good way to wake the students up and get them to
1. In the Spirits and Headhunters exhibition they will learn about amulets and their
significance to the owners. Using Blooms taxonomy higher level thinking: Design
your own amulet including elements that reflect your own culture and elements that
2. Using Blooms taxonomy lower thinking level: Describe the different ways cultures
prepared a celebration based on what you learned from the different exhibitions.
3. Using Blooms taxonomy lower thinking level: Compare and contrast how art varied
4. Using multiple intelligences linguistic: write a journal entry putting yourself in the
witnessed how different their musical instruments appeared then to now. Compare
6. Using multiple intelligences spatial: create a painting to your best ability using one
exhibition we learned how weaved baskets were a part of daily life. Create a replica
across Charles Percy painting of La Buena Ventura and learned how the painting
sparks many questions. Create a set of questions that you would ask Charles Percy
different cultures that you learned about at Bowers museum and highlight their
10. Using multiple intelligences intrapersonal: choose one gallery and reflect on how
the art made you feel and how they have impacted the world.
After the students have visited the site and learned about different cultures I would
like the students to on a paper reflect on how the museum made an impact on them. I
would also like them to list three different things they learned from the museum and what