Open-ended guided tours and choices on tours have become more common in art museums as educational and curatorial practices focus on visitor-centered experiences. What can museums do to help set the stage for these types of interactions between visitors, the museum, and works of art through programming and tours? In this article, the author…

In this article, Jason Wright begins by describing the "checklist traveler"--a traveler that has a checklist for every city they travel to and once done, they move on. This type of traveler would see the sites they were "supposed to see" and were on a tight schedule. The famous relics, monuments, statues, cathedrals, sweeping…

The purpose of this article is to use the author's cross-cultural teaching experiences to help practitioners understand and explore Chinese calligraphy as a creative art expression for children. Here, the author shares multiple ideas for projects featuring the Chinese culture. The author also identifies four constructive teaching principles from…

The arts encourage us to wake up, often by shocking us into a novel consciousness (Ayers, Greene, & Alexander-Tanner, 2012). Further, from the perspective of the artist, the basic human right to creative activity provides a vehicle for "talking back" (hooks, 1990, p. 337) in response to threats to social justice. Such is the case in…

Oliver Herring, the creator of TASK, defines it as: "[a]n improvisational event with a simple structure and very few rules... TASK's open-ended, participatory structure creates almost unlimited opportunities for a group of people to interact with one another and their environment. TASK's flow and momentum depend on the tasks written and…

Art educators are concerned with exposing their students to contemporary art making practices. They aim to create fresh lessons that expand their understandings of art in today's world while highlighting the importance of imagination. With a personal interest in performance and street art (art forms that have gained popularity in recent years),…

Continuing the traditions of the avant-garde, contemporary artists often question notions of originality through the practice of appropriation and repurposing familiar or loaded symbols and signs (Barrett, 2011). This Instructional Resource focuses on three aspects of artistic practice: improvisation as a way of emphasizing a process-driven…

Educators are concerned about what their students are learning in their interaction and participation in the digital culture. For art educators specifically, the digital and new media practices youth engage in raise other important questions: When contributing to the digital culture, what are they creating? What are the aesthetic qualities of the…

In this article, the authors discuss mixed-media projects done with elementary students in a summer art camp and preservice elementary teachers taking Visual Arts in the Elementary Classroom, illustrating their consideration of how stories carry the curricular potential to bring students' out-of-school experiences into the classroom. In order…

Educators hope that the impact teaching and curriculum have on students extends far beyond the classroom, making practical connections to daily life. Powerful myths about where art happens, who participates in the art world, and the communities that judge art, however, can cause feelings of exclusion, where even formally trained artists can feel…

What is the relationship between student teachers' studio art practice and pedagogy during the student teaching experience? What are the benefits of reflecting on connections between art teaching and artmaking after the student teaching experience? In developing one's art practice, art educators build conceptual frameworks for curriculum with…

What role can district visual art administrators play in articulating an educationally valuable conception of creativity and in establishing a culture that targets creativity as an educational goal? How can art administrators help teachers implement creativity goals? How can they communicate creativity's importance to principals, parents, and…

This article describes how High School Visual Arts Teacher Jethro Gillespie built a portable art gallery for his students--essentially an 8-foot cube made from plywood and lightweight boards that can be assembled with bolts and taken apart in sections. The ceiling pieces of the gallery have track lights, the interior walls have been painted gray,…

Viewing YouTube culture as a creative, collaborative process similar to animal swarms can help art educators understand and embrace youth's digital practices. School-age youth are among the most prolific contributors to YouTube, not just as viewers, but also as producers. Even preschoolers now produce videos (McClure, 2010). So pervasive,…

This article describes a series of public space projects based on the contemporary practice of interventionist artists who seek to creatively transform spaces and disrupt the ritual of the everyday. Two of the four public space projects were planned for school spaces: (1) a mock marathon during class transitions ("Monthly Meeting Marathon"); and…