Historical Contexts and Emerging Practices in Art Education

Abstract

When I began writing this editorial, i was sitting in the Vancouver International Airport in British Columbia, having just spent 3 days with colleagues from across the US and Canada discussing a range of contemporary concerns related to art education.Topics of conversation included the impact of social contexts on aesthetic experience and artistic practice; the expanding power of fear and the role it plays in the lives of students and teachers; and the emergence of do it yourself or DIY influences on art, and more broadly, on the richness of our material culture. These conversations encouraged me to continue thinking about how art education responds to the social forces within which it constructed and practiced. For me, this means that the history and future development of art education cannot be understood and imagined from the standpoint of an objective set of incontrovertible facts. Instead, we must address the diverse ways in which artists and educators see and engage with the world, as well as the forces that enable or constrain that engagement. Whatever understanding we acquire of the or the new pathways emerging in the present always situated within and influenced by the framework of our prevailing interpretations. When responding to the question, What history?, E. H. Carr (1961) wrote that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his [sic] facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past (p. 35); it a process of interpretation situated in a particular context at a particular time.Forthose persuaded of this contextual perspective, it always useful to study and reflect on the forces that influence our understanding of what art education has been in the or could be in the future. Sometimes untold or lesser-known stories and events can be brought to light in such a way that we change our thinking about art education's and perhaps, re-envision the possibilities for its future.The articles included in this issue of Studies in Art Education address a wide range of topics. However, they all, in different ways, help us to reflect on the social forces that affect what art education has been and what it may become. Two of the articles present research on important moments in the history of art education, while the remaining three set the stage for thinking about how our contemporary stories or narratives will be interpreted and told by art educators in the future. To think about this requires that we consider how current social forces are uncovering and constructing new potentialities and possibilities for the practices of art and art education.In Lowenfeld at Hampton (1939-1946): Empowerment, Resistance, Activism, and Pedagogy, Ann Holt looks at one of art education's most influential figures, Viktor Lowenfeld. Holt interested in an aspect of Lowenfeld's legacy that not usually thematized. Focusing on the years spent at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, Holt positions Lowenfeld's pedagogical engagement as a practice of social justice, grounded in efforts against institutionalized racism.''While doing so, Holt not only focuses on Lowenfeld's work to support his students in the face of well-entrenched racism; she also draws our attention to issues of historiography. Her article challenges us to consider how are created, whose pasts are deemed worth remembering in histories and why, and whose interests are served by leaving out the messiness of political turmoil, cultural conflict, racism, and class discrimination.In a similar vein, Gina Wenger's History Matters: Children's Art Education Inside the Japanese American Internment Camp reflects on the role played by art education during a particular period of political and cultural turmoil. Through archival research and interviews with survivors who were relocated and interned in camps during WWII, Wenger examines the practice of art education within these camps and the role it played in the cultural assimilation of young Japanese Americans. …