This brief article describes how Dawn Southworth, upper school art teacher at the Glen Urquhart School (GUS) (Massachusetts), devised the White Shirt Project to engage eighth-graders in art and society. Each year, Southworth purchases white shirts for her eighth grade students to transform into original works of art. Prior to the culminating art…

Context is everything. Very little in art or in history (or in life) happens in isolation, although works of art and events in history have been studied this way. This is especially true of the arts, which are so intrinsically connected to the cultures from which they emerge. This essential interconnectivity was also the premise behind the design…