Professional and amateur artists seek inspiration from viewing the works of others to enhance their creativity. This paper focuses on inspiration for artistic creation through art viewing by reviewing psychology studies on what types of artwork promote individuals' inspiration for creation (inspiring artwork) and how they experience inspiration…

Writing about art is a complex task that differs considerably from other forms of writing because it requires detailed understanding and application of certain theoretical frameworks for visual analysis. This has proven to be a major challenge amongst university and college students in Nigeria who grapple with interpreting visuals into text. The…

This essay explores two canonical installations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Cloisters and African galleries in the Rockefeller wing. After providing a brief history of the formation of these collections and their display strategies, I analyze the effect of exhibition design for a visitor's judgments and impressions of the works of art.…

How can museum educators create dialogical experiences with European decorative arts? This question frames my essay and stems from the challenges I have faced introducing objects whose original functions seem to overshadow their aesthetic and interpretive value. Repeated efforts to spark rich dialogue and collective interpretation around pieces of…

In this paper, I argue that Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of "consummatory experience", should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children (PFC) programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children (aged…

Numerous incidents have been reported in recent years wherein a work of art is mistaken as trash. The question is, how have people reached the point in the civilized world where a purported work of art cannot be distinguished from a pile of rubbish or a grid of condensation pipes? The answer to that question lies in the basic assumption of nearly…

This paper reviews some of the recent research relative to the thoughts and writings of the English art critic, Clive Bell, one of the leaders in British art criticism for the first part of the 20th century. Bell's conception of "art as significant form" is considered with specific reference to the following educators: (1) Roger Fry and…

This critical analysis focuses on the movement vocabulary and interaction of dancers in selected sections of the filmed version of "White Man Sleeps" (1988) by Siobhan Davies. The choreography is divided into five distinct parts, in accordance with divisions in the musical accompaniment from which the piece takes its name, a suite of…

In this article, the author explores the aesthetic harmony of how life should be lived through the unity of exchange between feeling and thinking, and in so doing attempts to show the importance of art or "aesthetics" as a category of philosophical instruction. His interest in this approach flows directly from his works in nineteenth- and…

The article talks about how--and whether--"English" can justify itself as an academic discipline, and about the pressures on it to do so. In the search for justification, is it the creative writer or the critic who provides the crucial element of value? Particular reference is made to the tradition of English at Cambridge, where the…

Argues that art history should have a more prominent place in primary and secondary education. Suggests promoting art history by (1) ensuring that teachers are knowledgeable in the discipline; (2) studying art history through other disciplines; and (3) exposing students to real artworks, local architecture, and the significance of popular culture.…