Educator Ernest Boyer believed that well-educated students should do more than master isolated facts. They should understand the "connectedness of things." He suggested organizing curriculum thematically around eight commonalities shared by people around the world. In the book "The Basic School: A Community for Learning," Boyer recommends that elementary schools become learning communities with a curriculum incorporating eight core human commonalities: shared life cycle, symbols, aesthetic response, sense of time and space, group membership, production and consumption, nature awareness, and values and beliefs. This article discusses Boyer's eight commonalities as they relate to art, which Boyer believed integral to all lessons. (Contains 1 online resource.)