1 . HANDSTITCHED WORLDS: THE CARTOGRAPHY OF QUILTS

Quilts (床罩) are a narrative art; with themes that are political, spiritual, communal, or commemorative, they are infused with history and memory, mapping out intimate stories and legacies through a handcrafted language of design. Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts is an invitation to read quilts as maps, tracing the paths of individual histories that illuminate larger historic events and cultural trends.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this insightful and engaging exhibition brings together 18 quilts from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, representing a range of materials, motifs, and techniques from traditional early-American quilts to more contemporary sculptural assemblages. The quilts in Handstitched Worlds show us how this too-often overlooked medium balances creativity with tradition, individuality with collective zeitgeist. Like a road map, these unique works offer a path to a deeper understanding of the American cultural fabric.

Number of Works:18 quilts

Organized by: American Folk Art Museum, New York

Approximate size:175-200 linear feet

Security: Moderate security

Participation Fee: Please inquire

Shipping: IA&A makes all arrangements; exhibitors pay outgoing shipping costs within the contiguous U.S.

Booking Period:12 weeks

Tour: June 2021—August2024

Contact: TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI

June 12, 2021—August 29, 2021

Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, WA

September 17, 2021—January 23, 2022

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT

February 19, 2022—May 14, 2022

Fort Wayne Muesum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN

June 18, 2022—September 11, 2022

AVAILABLE

October 2022—January 2023

Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum, Logan, KS

February 17,2023—May 14, 2023

AVAILABLE

June 2023—December 2023

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS

January 30, 2024—April 21, 2024

AVAILABLE

May 2024—August 2024

All tour dates can be customized to meet your scheduling needs. Please contact Traveling Exhibitions @ Artsand Artists.org for more information.

1. What is the purpose of the exhibition of Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts?

A．To promote creativity and individuality thorough the engaging exhibition.

B．To provide an opportunity for visitors to learn to make quilts stitch by stitch.

C．To give visitors an insight into the history and culture of America in specific periods.

D．To enrich the understanding of the American culture by a tour visit to museums across America.

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the article?

A．The exhibition is free both for the exhibitors and for the visitors.

B．Exhibitors that are interested can choose whatever dates they want.

C．The artistic and historic value of handstitched quilts used to be neglected.

D．Exhibitors that are interested can book the exhibition 12 weeks in advance.

3. The article is written to _________.

A．exhibitors

B．visitors

C．artists

D．historians

2 . Self-esteem is the ruling view you have of yourself. This includes your beliefs about your inner qualities and how you think others see you.     1     Someone can develop low self-esteem even when they are highly functional and greatly skilled. Understanding this mysterious emotional currency might be the key to unlocking your own self-worth.

People with healthy self-esteem don't need to boast about themselves to others. People with low self-esteem may tell you how much everyone loves them, what a great job they do at work, and how amazing they are at pretty everything under the sun even though they really wonder if it's true. People may see them as obnoxious or “full of themselves”.     2     They are not shy about sharing ideas, including constructive criticisms of others. They also take care of themselves without second-guessing or apologizing. They are the people who we say seem “sure of themselves”.

If you're starting to think you may have low self-esteem, you can work on the way you talk to yourself. When you turn off negative self-talk, you can open the floor to positive reinforcements and access the courage to show different sides of yourself. It isn't going to feel good at first, though. Keep going until it becomes less and less and maybe even a few awkward laughs in the mirror may help.     3    

However, in serious cases of low or even non-existent self-esteem, you may want to call in a professional or a specialist. Good mental health is important, and professionals doing psychotherapy do not pass judgement or give corrections.     4     It is the best way to get at the roots of your real self-esteem problems.

    5     It will take some work but your entire life — from your relationships to your body image to your work habits — will be touched with the kind of power that only comes from someone believing in themselves. This is the hardest part, and the greatest leap. With some changes and support, you can improve your self-esteem and see how everything else changes as a result.

A．Self-esteem is not always rooted in reality, though.

B．You have the power to shape a new self-perception.

C．This encourages you to speak openly without worry.

D．The real test of character is whether they can learn from their mistakes.

E．Self-esteem refers to a person's overall sense of his or her value or worth.

F．People with a healthy level of self-esteem present themselves with a casual confidence.

G．With some practice and persistence, you will win this internal struggle to see your self-worth.

3 . In 1953, when visiting his daughter’s maths class, the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. Later, he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. Since then, education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop (炒作和失败), even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life.

Softwares to “personalize” learning can help hundreds of millions of children stuck in miserable classes—but only if edtech supporters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. Alternatives have so far failed to teach so many children as efficiently as the conventional model of schooling, where classrooms, hierarchical year-groups, standardized curriculums and fixed timetables are still the typical pattern for most of the world’s nearly 1.5 billion schoolchildren. Under this pattern, too many do not reach their potential. That condition remained almost unchanged over the past 15 years, though billions have been spent on IT in schools during that period.

What really matters then? The answer is how edtech is used. One way it can help is through tailor-made instruction. Reformers think edtech can put individual attention within reach of all pupils. The other way edtech can aid learning is by making schools more productive. In California schools, instead of textbooks, pupils have “playlists”, which they use to access online lessons and take tests. The software assesses children’s progress, lightening teachers’ marking load and allowing them to focus on other tasks. A study suggested that children in early adopters of this model score better in tests than their peers at other schools.

Such innovation is welcome. But making the best of edtech means getting several things right. First, “personalized learning” must follow the evidence on how children learn. It must not be an excuse to revive pseudoscientific ideas such as “learning styles”: the theory that each child has a particular way of taking in information. This theory gave rise to government-sponsored schemes like Brain Gym, which claimed that some pupils should stretch or bend while doing sums. A less consequential falsehood is that technology means children do not need to learn facts or learn from a teacher—instead they can just use Google. Some educationalists go further, arguing that facts get in the way of skills such as creativity. Actually, the opposite is true. According to studies, most effective ways of boosting learning nearly all relied on the craft of a teacher.

Second, edtech must narrow, rather than widen, inequalities in education. Here there are grounds for optimism. Some of the pioneering schools are private ones in Silicon Valley. But many more are run by charter-school groups teaching mostly poor pupils, where laggards (成绩落后者) make the most progress relative to their peers in normal classes. A similar pattern can be observed outside America.

Third, the potential for edtech will be realized only if teachers embrace it. They are right to ask for evidence that products work. But skepticism should not turn into irrational opposition. Given what edtech promises today, closed-mindedness has no place in the classroom.

1. According to the passage, education technology can ________.

A．decrease teachers’ working load

B．facilitate personalized learning

C．help standardize curriculums

D．be loved by schoolchildren

2. Which example best argues against the underlined sentence in Para. 4?

A．The students who are better at memorization tend to be less creative.

B．Schools with bans on phones have better results than high-tech ones.

C．Shakespeare was trained in grammar but he penned many great plays.

D．Lu Xun’s creativity was unlocked after he gave up studying medicine.

3. The author believes that edtech functions well only when it is ________.

A．at the service of teaching

B．limited in use among pupils

C．aimed at narrowing the wealth gap

D．in line with students’ learning styles

4. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To stress the importance of edtech.

B．To introduce the application of edtech.

C．To discuss how to get the best out of edtech.

D．To appeal for more open-mindedness to edtech.