Thoughts on a Relevant Art Curriculum for the 21st Century

Abstract

We have something in photography that is called a zone system . . . the zone system is completely constructed around what makes white people look best. It is our system and our theory – photo theory – for understanding what a good print is, and it is based on white skin. So the very base of photography and the way that photography has been developed in the West as a science, because that’s what most of it is, is based on ideas of whiteness. What would have happened, for instance, if photography, had been developed in Japan? The images would look very different, and what is theoretically impossible or even practically acceptable would be very, very different as well. [Carrie Mae Weems in conversation with bell hooks, Art on my Mind. pp. 91–92]We face as a nation the deep, profoundly perturbed and perturbing question of our relationship to others – other cultures, states, histories, experiences, traditions, peoples, destinies. There is no Archimedian point beyond the question from which to answer it; there is no advantage outside the actuality of relationships among cultures, among us and others; no one has the epistemological privilege of somehow judging, evaluating, and interpreting the world free from the encumbering interests and engagements of the ongoing relationships themselves. [Ibid. p. 65]