About the Resource

Mia’s Arts of Asia learning resource is dedicated to the arts, culture, and stories of Asia and the Asian diaspora.

Welcome. Let's get inspired.

Welcome to Mia’s Arts of Asia learning resource, designed to help you integrate Asian art and culture into your curriculum. This tool emphasizes interdisciplinary learning with a focus on empathy, creativity, critical thinking, and global understanding. 

The main purpose of this new curriculum is to humanize the teaching of Asian arts and cultures, making connections between K–12 students and teachers and the artworks and cultural resources that may be new or unfamiliar to them.

We collaborated with Minnesota educators, artists and cultural leaders, and museum-education experts (learn more about our partners here) to ensure that our curriculum is nuanced, adaptable, and relevant. After numerous focus groups, classroom observation, and user testing sessions, we created a resource with more than thirty new lesson plans that offer flexibility and choice in meeting the needs of your classroom.

What you'll find

Whether you are a seasoned arts educator or integrating the arts into your curriculum for the first time (virtually or in person), you will appreciate the following features in Mia’s Arts of Asia learning resource:  

  • Flexible and printable lesson plans, each with an essential question to frame your instruction and promote inquiry-based learning 
  • Teaching and learning strategies that are easily adaptable to your classroom. The curriculum is intentionally interdisciplinary and nonprescriptive to emphasize that Asian art is for everyone and is relevant to all grade levels and subject areas. 
  • Minnesota academic standards supported by each lesson 
  • Videos featuring artists, poets, musicians, and hands-on art-making activities
  • Classroom-friendly features that make it easy to share artworks and video in full-screen mode and easy connections to our collections website
  • Antibias- and antiracist-focused lesson plans and educator resources to equip you to learn alongside your students 

How to use this tool

There’s no single way to explore! The tool is divided into three main units: Critical Foundations, Our Stories, and Make It.

Explore lesson plans by unit, subject area, or keyword search so you can prepare for class easily and efficiently. Videos and glossary terms are embedded within many of the lessons—or explore them on their own dedicated pages for easy browsing.

Use the Expand feature on image collections for easy sharing in the classroom. Just look for this icon on the bottom-right corner of a video or image.

Download videos for offline viewing by clicking the Download button on each video.

Each lesson is printable—look for the print button at the top of each lesson (Note: print functionality is not available on Firefox. Try Chrome or Safari to print.)

We’re always looking for your feedback and engagement. Reach out to visit@artsmia.org for more information or to join our educator mailing list.

Generous major support for The Arts of Asia online resource provided by the Freeman Foundation.

Additional generous support provided by the Gale Family Endowment.

Production Credits

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT & RESEARCH

Alyssa Machida, Sheila McGuire, Monique D'Almedia, Tori Hong

VIDEO PRODUCTION

Josie Lampone, Ryan Lee, Mike Dust, Brian Tighe, Jeff Kearns

PROJECT MANAGEMENT & CONTENT COORDINATION

Sorcha Douglas, Gretchen Halverson

COPY EDITING

Laura Silver

WEB DEVELOPMENT & DESIGN

Clockwork (agency partner), Kjell Olsen

EVALUATION

Alice Anderson

GRANT ADMINISTRATION

Darcy Berus, Tracy Christensen

PROJECT ADVISORS

Karleen Gardner, Douglas Hegley