In this article, the author examines how art educators can create narrators of art history rather than those who ascribe truth to the opinion of a few. She presents a series of tangible classroom activities that will potentially help art history become meaningful to students' lives. The author states that students have a right to access art…

What does an introduction to and engagement in performance art offer K-12 students? In this article, we respond to this question by proposing a lesson inspired by the artmaking practices of the contemporary artist Erwin Wurm. Performance art can be defined as any form of work that combines the artist's body and a live-action event with or…

In this Instructional Resource, Denmead and Brown consider how "Ruffneck Constructivists," an exhibition curated by Kara Walker at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), University of Pennsylvania, can disturb and provoke young creatives and art education more broadly. For this exhibition, Walker draws on the figure that MC Lyte…

A primary goal of substantive art education is to communicate visually--to decipher art for meaning and to construct meaning through images and objects. Strategies available to engage students are the interdisciplinary activities found in performance, visual and written forms of creative expression, and related disciplines such as ethnography,…

Studying images of families in works of art and in snapshots is compelling, and the author wondered if looking at both types of images side by side might help students understand both kinds of images more fully. Snapshots often prompt detailed and vivid stories among family members and friends. Therefore, she wondered if dialogue about snapshots…

Advocacy is not new to art education. Over the years, Goldfarb (1979), Hodsoll (1985), and Erickson and Young (1996) have written about the importance of arts advocacy, but the concept of advocacy has evolved with the times. For example, in the 1970s, arts advocacy was described as a "movement" and brought together art educators, administrators,…

The consequence of narratives becoming stagnant or controlled is that they become a Master Narrative. The Master Narrative is an "ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else: The Master Fiction... history" (Moyers, 1990, para. 4). Master Narratives use myths and ideologies to sustain a sanitized version of…

Collecting and placing images/objects of inspiration and personal significance is not an uncommon practice for studio artists. Washington based mixed-media/installation artist Renee Stout draws from the collections she displays in her studio and in her home. She is an avid collector of various objects, including vintage perfumes, West African…

This first written assignment of the semester for the author's undergraduate introductory art history class--an essay where students describe and reflect upon the significance of a family heirloom--is instrumental in meeting class objectives. The author's objectives in this class are for students: (1) to broaden their conception of what art is…

Many of the paintings of 20th-century American artist Philip C. Curtis defy clear classification. Curtis's artworks often show dreamlike and fantastical qualities and are therefore frequently pigeonholed as Surrealistic. While this classification is not completely erroneous, it fails to acknowledge some subtle differences between Curtis's artwork…

"Artist-Teacher" is a powerful and frequently used term in the fields of art, museum studies, art history, and art education. Art educators typically use the term to describe their dual practice or to emphasize the importance of art production in relation to their teaching. In this article, the author reviews historical uses of the term…

When displayed in museums and classrooms, Renaissance-era (1420-1600) painting, architecture, and drawing masterworks are often decontextualized from the social reality of the Academy system under which they were produced. For centuries, the artworks of the Italian Renaissance have seduced viewers with technical mastery, exquisite pigments, and…

This article proposes a way to expand the study of arts education within new contexts of technology and globalization. Drawing upon theories that have informed arts and aesthetic education in the past, the authors suggest new applications for these ideas to ensure that arts education sustains its significance in twenty-first-century society. The…

Ideas are starting points-for thought, discussion, reading, viewing, writing, and making. The two "brainstorms on paper" presented in this article illustrate how taking an idea and examining it from an artistic point of view can generate thematic starting points to help teachers and students connect the visual arts to ideas that ripple across the…

A result of the industrial age was a short-lived but powerful new American art movement called Precisionism, most evident in painting, but visible also in drawing, photography, and print-making, focusing on industrial and mechanical subjects. Precisionism originated in the 1920s, allied with European Cubism's fascination with shape and geometric…