As Christo Wraps the Art Scene...Are Educators Ready?

Abstract

ow! Are they repairing the coast? Is that really art? This guy's a nut ... V V I saw his pink donuts on TV. So why the Reichstag? Why bother? Who gets to keep it? Neat! Why not just leave it there? Who helps? Does he get paid for this? . . . He must be rich. Why all that work for nothing? These are typical questions young people put to art education majors during a recent Christo exhibit in the Herron Gallery Art-to-School Program, a program preparing students and teachers to deal with art of this decade. The Herron Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Art Education Department at Indiana University, Indianapolis, have collaborated for the last three years to provide experiences with contemporary art for public school students, K-12. The Gallery exhibits work of avant-garde national and international artists as well as emerging regional and national figures. The Gallery curator is extremely receptive to art education. She solicits funding for the Art-to-School Program and provides gallery updates on current shows to our education students. As an assistant professor of art education, I coordinate this program with the curator. The cooperation between galleries and museums, university art teacher preparation programs, and public school art teachers is essential in preparing art education students with successful gallery experiences and non-studio methodology for teaching art. The art education department and the gallery share the philosophy that public school students of all ages should look at, discuss, and study contemporary art on a regular basis. I refer here to art imagery of this decade. This includes art found in today's galleries as well as popular art found in film, TV, and advertising. For this to take place, future art teachers must develop a large repertoire of current images, ideas, and philosophies of art. Universities also must prepare teachers with opportunities to test and develop these skills in the presence of both art and a public school audience. Once these skills are practiced in a teacher preparation program, students will more likely promote looking at and talking about art on a daily basis in their own artrooms, balancing the current studio approach