Testimonials – Meet the Masters

On behalf of all the teachers and students of dePortola Elementary School, I’d like to commend you for providing an outstanding first year of Meet the Masters for our school. The quality of your program is excellent. The teachers felt their students truly learned to recognize the works and styles of the great masters that they were introduced to. We appreciated the variety of classroom art projects presented.

Our lecturer was well liked by teachers and students. She is professional and responsive to each age group of students. I also found her to be excellent as our coordinator and workshop presenter. We felt very fortunate that she was with us.

Our principal has also been enthusiastic and supportive of the Meet the Masters program. We both will always be pleased to recommend your program to other elementary schools.

Everyone is so impressed with the quality of the art education and techniques the students are learning! Many have entered art contests and are attending extra art classes after school. The program has sparked a new outlet for kids to create and explore art and design.

Many students last year who were more hesitant about approaching art are diving in this year with much more confidence with technique and accessing the possibilities of using different mediums.

I also receive many pieces of student art created at home after our lessons. Recently, a student drew a beautiful fruit still life after learning about Frida Kahlo.

Read the case study for this school district.

I am always amazed when I see a child who does not think they are an artist, create a piece of art that puts a smile on their face. It is so important to help all the students explore their creative sides.

Thinking creatively will help our children in their future careers, to problem solve and be innovative, no matter what that career may be.

Meet the Masters is a wonderful program that exposes the children to so many amazing mediums and artistic styles. The step by step instruction creates a comfortable environment for all children to excel and explore their creative side.

The Meet the Masters art camp in Uganda was a great success! MTM was a highlight for the children, and it made it very simple and straightforward to teach. Thanks isn’t enough…the children and adults loved learning about the color wheel, art history, seeing famous pieces of art – plus, making their own masterpieces. I saw many children moved in new ways because of the art they experienced through the curriculum.

You have a super program here!

The Meet the Masters program has been a real blessing for not only my classroom, but also to me as an individual. I love learning about the lives of these artists, and then seeing the students apply the artists’ techniques themselves. Even if you already have a stock of “projects” that you rely on, Meet the Masters is a wonderful addition to your program. I recommend this to every teacher I know!

THANK YOU for the amazing program you have put together for kids to gain art appreciation and become little art masters themselves. I am a HUGE art lover and to see my daughters and my students enthralled by the masters of our time is a joyous sight!

They are having a ball and it is taking our instructional program to a new richness and depth. Thank you again!

MTM meets our requirements because it’s standards-aligned and extremely engaging for students. Our school is located on Camp Pendleton base, and we serve military families who often join or leave during the school year. We’re always excited to welcome new students but sad when families have to leave to serve our country. Meet the Masters gives these students a consistent, high-quality art education no matter when they arrive. Students are really enjoying learning about each artist and how their life story shaped them to become a master.

Read the case study for this school district.

Parents tell me all the time, “It’s amazing my kids recognize this art when they see it in places.”

This also gives them a chance to touch professional-quality art supplies, too, and just get a taste of what’s out there at a young age!

My 10-year-old daughter surprised me when she recognized a Picasso. “This was his blue period”, she said. “How did you know that”, I asked. Her reply was, “I learned about Picasso at Meet The Masters”.

I’m thrilled our school supports this program!

I first discovered MTM eight years ago at Legacy Prep Academy in Utah. I signed up to volunteer and I was blown away! It was simple, informative, and so much fun. The structure of the scripted lesson plans made it so easy to present to students. Art history, technique, creative inspiration, cultural literacy! All these things presented in a way that is fun and easy to retain. It is a joy for the students and the adults lucky enough to be teaching them!

As the district’s middle school art teacher for 26 years, I recognized that not all teachers had the artistic background or passion to create their own lessons.

Meet the Masters provided systematic, engaging lessons with clear instructions and minimal supplies, ensuring students built a strong foundation in art from K-5 and were well-prepared for middle school.

The museum offers their local schools an ArtSmart program – they provide Meet the Masters curriculum and art supplies to local schools for the teachers to implement.

Here are quotes from some of the participating teachers.

“We haven’t had such a good lesson in YEARS!”

“We absolutely love the format…. The script is a godsend. That’s what we love the most! It makes it easy for any fun teacher to pick up and teach!!”

“Meet the Masters appears to be a comprehensive program adapted to a variety of age ranges and abilities. Instructors are very engaging with students. Adapted well to varied ages of development.”

We have been enjoying Meet the Masters at Friends Christian School for about 7 years. I am so impressed with the program. It has taught the children not only facts about a particular artist but also a love of art. Many of the students who are not excelling academically find a talent or expression in art that they may not find anywhere else. This builds their self-confidence. I have seen this time and time again. Our MTM teacher has been such an inspiration to our students with her passion and enthusiasm. The way she leads the assembly with slides, hands-on objects, facts, and background of the artist has the kids so intently listening it is amazing. The children are able to recall facts about the artist long after the project, because it is taught in such an interesting and exciting way. Being someone who loves art and creativity I wanted to thank you for this program for our school and thank you for sending a teacher who loves what she does.

We are truly blessed.

I have been so impressed with Meet the Masters and truly believe it has been an invaluable learning experience for my son. He loved being exposed in creative and unique ways to history and cultures different than our own.

Volunteering was simple with all the instructions and training videos. What an amazing program!

Meet the Masters is art appreciation.  It shows the students the life of the artist, what was happening in the world at that time, what the artist’s studio looked like. The kids really get to know the artist, and when they create their own piece of art, they feel more of a connection.

Color Me Happy: How a Stay-at-Home Mom Filled Coronado Schools with Art

The art from this program (that my son participated in) decorated my walls for years. Great stuff! Looking forward to doing it with my grandchildren.

I used this program for 14 years a volunteer for our elementary school – it was so fun! 

Some that I loved include: the Maria Martinez clay project, the Alexander Calder mobile project, the Klimt project with foil, Georgia O’Keefe with the close ups of plant pieces, and the Monet project learning about Impressionism.

Meet the Masters Art Program and their teachers have been a wonderful addition to Las Palmas Elementary School. Our students love the engaging discussions about art and famous artists and greatly enjoy the actual art projects. The students are a part of raising the funds each year to keep the program going and they love hearing they have reached the amount and art is returning. Meet the Masters is an easy to implement program at any school, highly organized, and worth the money.

As an artist and educator for over 40 years, I have always prided myself on doing what is right for students. Having the resources that not only teach skills, but the standards and the art history connected to those skills is monumental. 

Meet the Masters gives teachers and the students the language to articulate what the work is and what it means. MTM provides the curriculum and the tools to take art education to a different level. In today’s world, art is a means to connect culture, education, and who we are as a people.

Who better to learn from, than the Masters?

I’ve never seen a program that provides this integration, and goes beyond the silly, little holiday crafts.

Meet the Masters continues to entertain, educate and keep my kids interested in the art masters. We have been working with MTM and their teachers for many years now and I always recommend it to other teachers who want to get the most out of their art program.

Absolutely 5 stars!

I love MTM because it provides our kids with otherwise unavailable or limited art exposure. It gives them a chance to create and be inspired by amazing artists from different times in history, as well as within different mediums. Being a coordinator for MTM allows me the privilege of providing inspiration and creativity to kids just starting out on their educational journey- they never cease to amaze me with what they are able to express!

I am the director of Meet the Masters at REACH Leadership STEAM Academy in Riverside California. The children love the art projects and look forward to learning about artists every month. At the end of every school year we do an art gallery where we display the student’s artwork. The parents, students, and school staff all enjoy Meet the Masters!

While I was in elementary school, Meet the Masters visited many times and I was in awe by the whole experience. To this day I still think about the lessons I learned and still have my rendition of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I would love to inspire young students the same way Meet the Masters instructors have inspired me and so many of us.

Teachers were able to implement the clearly written Meet the Masters lesson plan with ease. Our second graders were actively engaged during the Picasso lesson. They created their own abstract art and were proud to share their masterpieces with their families during Open House last year. Overall, we were impressed with the material and the students enjoyed learning about Picasso. We will be doing the art project again this year to share at Open House.

Working as a volunteer with the Meet the Masters program at my son’s school this past year has been such a great experience. I believe art programs help children build confidence and instill a sense of wonder and curiosity that helps foster creativity. Meet the Masters is so wonderful because it gives young children a taste of art fundamentals while teaching them about the many styles and techniques of artists from around the world and from different time periods. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing each child in my son’s first grade class create their own unique masterpiece!

I tell my students each week they are getting more art history this year than many students get in university. I love hearing them learn and use words like post Impressionism, realism and complimentary color palette in conversation.

So far, the Georges Seurat pointillism project using sand paper has been the most popular!

I wanted to tell you how wonderful the program is going here at our school.  The children are very engaged and enthusiastic at the start of every artist.  We are continually learning and developing new art skills.  The knowledge that the children are obtaining about different time periods and different styles of art is amazing.  The program is super easy to follow and the cost of materials for the projects has been minimal, which is great for a school on a tight budget.  I just wanted to say thank you for offering such an educational, user friendly, and economically sound program to the schools of this nation.

Thank You!

MTM is amazing, engaging and gets all the students involved and excited about art.

I would absolutely recommend this program.

I appreciate the program package that you offer. It has been helpful for us in our school to provide such a broad exposure to artists and genres. I’ve experienced many different methods of art instruction in various schools I’ve served.

I’ve just completed my first year at my school as principal and this has been very valuable program for us.

I have been involved with and using the Meet the Masters Art Curriculum for about 20 years. I started out as a parent volunteer at my son’s former elementary school in Orange County, and then went on to facilitate and coordinate a Meet the Masters Art program at Maranatha Christian Academy in Santa Ana. This just goes to show how successful and user friendly this art program really is!

The biggest blessing for me, is being involved with such an amazing and diverse curriculum that draws kids in to the world of art, the lives of the artist, as well as the history behind the great masters. I know that their love of learning about art is translated into the many art projects that Meet the Masters offers. The MTM staff are here to assist you in designing your schools individual programs and offer you the support to make sure that you and your program will succeed.

I used MTM in Arkansas about 12 years ago, so I was quite familiar with the program when I needed art curriculum again. The packaging, directions, and techniques of the master artists made implementation straightforward. The Jacob Lawrence materials were especially meaningful because they reinforced the idea that an urban student can be a person of color and an artist. When budgetary cuts impact art curriculum, this is an affordable response that gives students opportunity to replicate outstanding art.

Read the case study for this school district.

I had a parent stop me in the halls and express how much her children loved the curriculum. She was overjoyed that formal art education was included in our school day and that it was a curriculum that challenged the older elementary students, and was able to be done by the younger ones as well. She had a first and fourth grader at the time. I also had an aide who was in the classroom with me while I was teaching tell me how much she loved that art history portion of the curriculum. She said that she wasn’t much of an artist, and as a kid she dreaded craft time, but that the inclusion of the art history would have made all the difference to her as a child. I have students who have complained about going to a good behavior activity (which are always super fun!) because it meant she would have to miss art that week!

Read the case study for this school district.

The children, parents and I are thrilled with the program. As it is with every art teacher, I have made modifications and at times branch out with it. But overall, such a blessing!

Thank you again and Keep up the great work MTM!

As a volunteer for my son’s school, Peace with Christ Christian School, in Aurora, Colorado, I recommended the Meet the Masters program to the art teacher and to the principal. One track was purchased the next year and another track was purchased the subsequent year. Volunteers moved between classrooms presenting artists to children who were excited and enthusiastic about learning the Masters of art.  The curriculum presented the artist biography, broke down art techniques into manageable pieces, and enhanced the students artistic skills.

Wishing you many years of continued success in bringing art and Meet the Masters to children, of all ages.