PITTSBURGH, PA.- Picturing America, a new education program from the National Endowment for the Humanities in cooperation with the American Library Association, has been designed to help teach American History to students in grades K–12 through the study and understanding of masterpiece works by American artists. Included in the 40 works chosen for the initiative is Carnegie Museum of Art's Portrait of a Boy, 1890, by John Singer Sargent, on view in the museum's Scaife Galleries.

Portrait of a Boy depicts a young Homer Saint-Gaudens, son of the painter's friend, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and his mother. Sargent's representation of his subjects deviates from the sentimental portraiture of the time, catching the natural expression and posture of a boy who is not enthused about sitting for the artist.

"Carnegie Museum of Art has long believed in the importance of education in, with, and through the arts," states Marilyn Russell, curator of education at the museum. "Sargent's portrait has been key to our Art and Narrative Writing program and has introduced thousands of Pittsburgh-area students to an important moment in American art and life. We are pleased that it now will have a nation-wide educational reach."

Picturing America's works have been translated into large, high-quality reproductions that participants in the program will receive, along with a Teacher Resource Book of ideas and background information for using the selected works of art in core subject areas, and access to on-line lesson plans and other resources available at PicturingAmerica.neh.gov.

Other artists in the Picturing America program that are also represented in the Carnegie Museum of Art collection are Romare Bearden, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edward Hopper, Mary Cassatt, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Thomas Eakins, and James McNeill Whistler.

General support for the exhibitions and programs at Carnegie Museum of Art is provided by grants from The Heinz Endowments and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.