Interactive Art Game Explores Art During the Renaissance

The Renaissance Connection is an educational tool developed for the Allentown Art Museum's interactive educational web site. With the simple click of a mouse button, players travel 500 years into the past to discover many Renaissance innovations revealed through the Allentown Art Museum's Samuel H. Kress Collection of European art.

Be a patron of the arts. Design your own innovation. Investigate Renaissance artworks in depth. Discover how past innovations inform life today. And more, all enhanced with quirky visuals, irreverent humor, and engaging interactivity that reveal the ways that Renaissance life and culture resemble our own.

This site also features free lesson plans for teachers in the middle school grades. Using Renaissance innovations, these lessons incorporate language arts, visual arts, social studies, and math.

For example, a math and social studies lesson plan explores how patronage worked during the Renaissance.The interactive "Be a Patron of the Arts" lets players assume the role of a wealthy patron commissioning a self-portrait set to Renaissance music. And as noted, it is done with great humor. To visit the site, click here.