This essay is based on work the author began several years ago when she undertook to analyze and compare the diverse descriptions of discipline-based art education that had appeared in the professional art education literature. It compared concepts of Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) presented in writings by Ralph Smith; Gilbert Clark, Michael Day, and Dwaine Greer; and Brent Wilson. At the beginning of this venture her intention was to challenge the claims that a "quiet evolution" has taken place in the development of the comprehensive approach to art education under the rubric of DBAE, and to show conceptual consistencies and inconsistencies in the claims made by the above five authors. That task escalated into a search for understanding of the many accommodations that had taken place since the concept was developed and implemented in programs through Getty-funded efforts of the 1980s and 1990s, and to relate these adaptations to the writings of Ralph Smith and the authors of the Discipline-based Art Education (DBAE) monograph. In conducting this conceptual analysis, the author examined documented reports of an assessment completed by the external evaluators of the Getty-funded DBAE Regional Institutes, and compared these reports to earlier frameworks presented by Smith and Greer, et al., and concluded that a different conceptual paradigm had been employed by the evaluators and imposed in developing the postmodern concept of art education described in "The Quiet Evolution." (Contains 15 notes.)