During the 2009 Summer Institute, participants were offered a choice of three field trips to neighboring cultural institutions.
Grade 4 teachers spent a day at the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California, on the east side of San Francisco Bay. The Peralta Hacienda Historical Park is one of the most significant historical sites in the East Bay. It was the first European settlement after the establishment of Mission San Jose and as such is the birthplace of Oakland. (They are also one of the project partners for our latest TAH grant.) The teachers were given a guided tour by Alex Saragoza, professor with the UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, which focused on the lives of the California settlers at Rancho San Antonio during the Spanish Colonial and Mexican Territorial days.
 Fifth and eighth grade teachers visited the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Museum staff introduced the teachers to art-related curriculum material and resources. One such resource is "Get Smart with Art @ the de Young". an interdisciplinary curriculum package that uses art objects as primary documents, sparking investigations into the diverse cultures represented by the Museums' collections.(Download Get Smart with Art sample sections in PDF format). The presentation was followed by a tour of the museum's American colonial and 19th century collections led by museum curator's.
Grade 11 teachers spent the morning touring a number of public works of which were part of a vast network of New Deal WPA projects in the Bay Area. Their guide was Gray Brechin, a Visiting Scholar in the Dept. of Geography at the University of California, who leads the California's Living New Deal Project. Sites included the Berkeley Rose Garden with it's magnificent stonework and landscaping, Berkley High School's concrete murals (see image here) , and architectural features of the Berkeley Main Post Office and Berkeley Civic Center.
 The tour continued in San Francisco with a visit to Rincon Annex Post Office mural where Gray Brechin gave a fascinating history of the ceramic panels by Russian artist Anton Refregier. As part of the New Deal and under the auspices of the US Treasury Department, TRAP (Treasury Relief Art Project) placed murals in post offices around the country. The theme of the Rincon Post Office project was to be a public historical depiction of San Francisco's history. The murals were not without contraversy, as you see from this article Rincon Annex WPA Mural.
Later the Grade 11 teachers visited the California Historical Society for a guided tour of their newest exhibition “Hobos to Street People: Artists' Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present”
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