Spanish missions that dot the landscape in California today exist as centers of historical interpretation. Visitors to California, residents of the state, and school children often turn to these sites to learn about the early history of the region. Unbeknownst to many visitors, the history presented at many contemporary California mission sites…

America's private colleges and universities include most of the oldest institutions of higher education in the country, and their evolving physical campuses say much about American education. In recent years, the study of campus history, preservation, and adaptive reuse has received increasing attention by many sectors of the educational…

As physical evidence of institutional aspiration and achievement, ambition and accomplishment, campus heritage (broadly defined) has emerged as a major component in comprehensive campus planning and in devising a site-specific sense of place. Physical actions related to campus heritage include the renewal and/or repurposing of landmark…

For this kindergarten classroom activity, students are asked to pretend they have just won a trip to four historical sites: (1) Lincoln Memorial; (2) Mount Rushmore; (3) White House; and (4) Statue of Liberty. The activity instructs the students to keep a journal of the trip (taken via the Internet) so that a presentation can be given to the class…

Presents a lesson plan about the Keys' Desert Queen Ranch, located in the Joshua Tree National Park (California), that can be used in a unit on U.S. western expansion or desert environments. Explains students learn about life on a homestead and Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas on self-reliance. (CMK)

Banpo is a village that existed 6,000 years ago near Xi'an in the Shaanxi Province of China. Artifacts unearthed from the Banpo site are all that remains of this prehistoric clan-based community. Five excavations conducted from 1953 to 1957 revealed the remains of 45 houses, 200-odd storage pits, six kilns, 250 tombs, and more than 10,000 stone…

This report examines arts participation in the ten largest metropolitan areas in the United States using data from the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. These data indicate that, in general, these metropolitan regions tend to be more alike than different with respect to arts participation patterns. Analysis reveals that while…

This report examines arts engagement in ten key states in the U.S. by analyzing data from the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). It is organized into ten state profiles that summarize key demographic characteristics, the arts landscape, and public participation in the arts. Because the regions profiled here are not a random…