Higher Education Visual Arts and Inclusion

Abstract

Generally, the study of the visual arts in higher education includes studio practice and artistic theory encompassing fine art and its related fields (such as painting, sculpture, conceptual art, and art history). However, art at higher education has constructed dominant practices and discourses that are based on forms of engagement developed from powerful Western social, historical, and academic traditions. These socially and stylistically exclusive traditions represent the cultural contexts from which modernism emerged. As a result, a singular approach to art in higher education is often implicit in art curriculum trajectories, which result in hegemonic forms of delivery, unchanging course and program identities, and ultimately limits on the development of student creativity. Using a broad survey of history and ongoing debates concerning inclusion, this chapter examines some aspects of this social and stylistic background of the visual art curriculum in higher education. It suggests that there are opportunities for a hybridized and culturally inclusive curriculum of the future.