The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is delighted to present Jessica Diamond: Wheel Of Life. The monumental text-based artwork is the largest museum installation to date by American conceptual artist Jessica Diamond (b. New York City, 1957). Wheel Of Life fills the Hirshhorn’s second-floor inner circle galleries with 15 text-and-image based artworks that contain numerous allusions to American literature and twentieth-century popular culture, which highlight the imaginative nature of the artist’s practice.

This guide consists of five arts-integrated lessons for students in grades 6–12 that serve as a learning framework for teaching autobiography and literary devices. Each standards-aligned lesson highlights a work in Wheel Of Life and includes ready-to-implement classroom discussion prompts, background on each artwork, and a printable student activity page. In addition to the lessons in this teacher guide, you’ll find links to digital content on the Smithsonian Learning Lab, a link to Hirshhorn Eye video for the exhibition, additional information on Jessica Diamond, and tips for extended artmaking. We hope you and your students enjoy making connections between text and image in Jessica Diamond: Wheel Of Life.