Art Education & Theory Research

Curriculum Change for the 21st Century: Visual Culture in Art Education by Kerry Freedman & Patricia Stuhr raises some good arguments as to why we must broaden our view of art & visual culture in order to open up the processes of creative and critical inquiry in art education. I completely agree that visual culture and art can be defined as anything under the sun; from painting, to advertisements and images on the Internet. However, is there a danger of moving so far away from the formal, aesthetic, and technical aspects of art that we cease to value it’s beauty, it’s formality and the depth and range of skills that go into it’s production? In my view this is a great danger, because even though I graduated from my Bachelor art degree in 2002 the focus of all my studies were so much based on the abstract, conceptual, and inquiry aspects of art that we were barely taught any technical skills at all. This article, which was written in 2004, in my view is a little behind the times. We must look at the direction art and visual culture is taking right now and create a balance between the focus on formal, historical, classical, post modern, and cultural inquiry in our art education.

Beyond Visual Culture: Seven Statements of Support for Material Culture Studies in Art Education by Paul E. Bolin & Doug Blandy explores how material culture studies are a good theoretical basis for art education. The authors question the desirability of a visual dominant culture and instead ask us to embrace the multi-sensory, holistic, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methods of material culture in art education instead. Using seven provocative statements, the authors explain how the focus on material culture will create further expansion in art education learning, cross disciplinary borders and bring attention to the array of human made objects and sensory stimulus all around us. In the authors’ 6th statement they explain how adolescents who are participating in multi-sensory lifestyles can benefit from discovering how material culture can express the contemporary world they live in. What are some of the ways that we can teach secondary art students about material culture as it relates to the fast moving and high tech world we live in? How can we create connections with them through the familiar landscape of their modern lives while we teach about art and material culture? How can we push the boundaries of conventional art education in high schools to include interdisciplinary and phenomenological art that incorporates performance, installation, and multi-media art that engages the senses?