You may recognize her as the formidable Mariah Dillard in Netflix's Marvel series Luke Cage or from popular films like 12 Years a Slave. Alfre Woodard is an award-winning actor on stage and screen, but her work behind the scenes as an arts education advocate is equally notable. As a mentoring artist for the Kennedy Center's Turnaround Arts…

In this essay, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández reflects on the comments made in a forum convened to reflect on his article "Why the Arts Don't 'Do' Anything: Toward a New Vision for Cultural Production in Education," published in the "Harvard Educational Review" ("HER")'s special issue entitled…

In considering how policy work might forward arts education, it is helpful to reflect on the present state of music and arts education while looking ahead at future challenges and possibilities. This response to Shuler's (2001) set of predictions related to music education and policy in the twenty-first century addresses such work in the…

In the spring of 2013, the "Harvard Educational Review" ("HER") published a special issue entitled "Expanding Our Vision for the Arts in Education" (Vol. 83, No. 1). Following a variety of forward-looking essays and arts learner reflections concerning the potential of the arts in education, the issue concluded with a…

Meaningful interactions with works of art are often absent from education. Across the country, art museums are intent on changing this situation. But to incorporate art viewing into an educational milieu that does not value art, art museum educators are constantly forced to justify the educational value of their programs. One common argument to…

At Arts Advocacy Day 2009 in Washington, over 500 citizens educated, advocated, and lobbied for federal support for the arts and its positive impact on the U.S. economy. This year the Nancy Hanks Lecture was given by Wynton Marsalis, whose extraordinary address voiced the potential of the arts in this new era of hope. For dance educators, Marsalis…

In this essay, the author asks, "What can the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley teach us about arts education today?" In Shelley's time, no one was yet worried about improving math, reading, or SAT scores. Nevertheless, there was an implication in the rise of the sciences that educators were even then beginning to confront: What, some…

This paper is intended to support art education advocates and policymakers as they formulate strategies for broadening the base of school offered visual art experiences through discipline-based art education (DBAE). The study is divided into three sections. The first section of the paper concerns assumptions, ideas, and perspectives underlying the…

This article reviews the history of recent efforts advocating reform in art education. Specific attention is devoted to the reports and leadership efforts of the National Art Education Association (NAEA). (JDH)

Arts advocacy is on the minds today of many who are involved in theatre education, and the arts in general. This author offers an interesting perspective on the movement by focusing on understanding who engages in arts advocacy, what they are advocating for, how they approach their efforts, and why they undertake arts advocacy in the first place.

Lists the presidents of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) since its founding and describes their messages in "Art Education." Many messages dealt with NAEA activities or with attempts to increase membership. The latest president, Edmund B. Feldman, has issued a call for getting "art into the mainstream of…

This article provides an analysis of why the arts suffer from a lack of support by school administrators. It includes five recommendations to help maximize acceptance and support for arts education programs. (JDH)

In 2003, the Arts Education Partnership's Second National Forum on Partnerships Improving Teaching in the Arts recommends that Teaching Artists be trained to be advocates and to speak publicly to education stakeholders about what they do. The author agrees. However, she believes that Teaching Artists must familiarize themselves with the available…

Records discussion of an arts advocacy roundtable began at the August 2000 meeting of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and continued online. Explains how theatre departments have found themselves defending their very existence in the past decade. Includes discussions of the meaning of arts advocacy; how to incorporate arts advocacy…

The history of state support of the arts in education in California is sketched very briefly, and is followed by a description of the beginning of an arts advocacy group designed to lobby for the arts. (KC)