The Brownsville Museum of Fine Art's educational program, Through the Generations, provides a means for creating closer family connections and knowledge about family heritage via a range of art activities. Beginning in the summer of 2008, children and teens have experienced the pleasure and excitement of learning how art can relate to themselves and life around them.  Historic paintings from the Museum’s Permanent Collection served as an aesthetic springboard for this effort. These include artworks by the Museum’s founding members, Ruth McGonigle, Calla Lily Magill, and Clara Lily Ely, the group’s first president. Visiting artists from Mexico, a variety of American artists who came to the Rio Grande Valley during that time, and other contemporaries and colleagues from the 1920’s through the 1950s also have works in the collection. Young people are able to learn from paintings, drawings, watercolors, and prints that captured the local cultural influences and growth during that formative era. The works are typically realistic depictions that document the landscape, architecture, seascape, and the local populace. Children and their parents are able to identify and relate to these subjects.