WebQuest- Antiques Roadshow: The Value of Artwork

Antiques Roadshow: The Value of Artwork
For grades 9 through 12

Introduction
The Antiques Roadshow film crew is coming to your school. In your group, you will be finding, researching, and appraising artwork.

The Task
You will be working in a group of three. Among your group you will decide who will be the appraiser and the other two will be antique collectors, one person may be someone just looking to make a buck. Your group will be presenting in front of the class in the form of a skit.

For inspiration in writing your script visit the video archives.

• In the keyword box enter a type of art you are interested in seeing appraised. For example: paintings and drawings, ceramics, folk art, portraits, etc.
  
• Once the search is complete you will be presented with a list of episodes, scroll through, choose a title that interests you and click “Watch Appraisal,” on the right of the page.
  
• This will bring you to a page giving you information on the object that was appraised, the video of the appraisal, the transcript of the appraisal and the appraiser’s name and image that, when clicked, will bring you to a page giving you information on him or her.

As a group you will decide upon 2 pieces of artwork.

Appraiser- you will be responsible for researching the artwork. This must include the name of the artist, the title of the artwork, when it was made, the medium, and any other interesting facts about it that you can find. Based on research you will decide the value of each artwork your group has chosen, and during the presentation must use the research to support your decision on value. Type up the information you found and give a copy to the teacher before your skit is performed.



Antique Collector 1- you are responsible for choosing one of the two pieces of artwork the group has decided on. You must print out an image of this artwork. You must come up with a story of how this piece of art happened to come into your possession. You may want to create a character for yourself, ex: a nice older person who had this artwork lying around and always thought it might be worth something; or someone just trying to get money out of the artwork they had found, expecting it to be worth way more than it really is. Come up with an idea on what paid to get this artwork, or if it was inherited.

Antique Collector 2- you are responsible for choosing one of the two pieces of artwork the group has decided on. You must print out an image of this artwork. You must come up with a story of how this piece of art happened to come into your possession. You may want to create a character for yourself, ex: a nice older person who had this artwork lying around and always thought it might be worth something; or someone just trying to get money out of the artwork they had found, expecting it to be worth way more than it really is. Come up with an idea on what paid to get this artwork, or if it was inherited.

Both antique collectors should be very different characters.

Each group member is to write a reaction paper to the process of this assignment, and their opinion on how the value of artwork should be determined.

Checklist:

• Script of skit
• Research information
• Print outs of artwork chosen
• Reaction papers

Antiques Roadshow

• For artwork research, feel free to use textbooks, websites, magazines, etc.