Art educators are adept at using images to communicate and spark dialogues. But what happens when the conversations that are needed in classrooms concern topics that are intentionally silenced or repeated so often that contradictions become invisible? The dilemma of visibility is central when talking to students about Whiteness, which White people…

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 National Visual Arts Standards (NVAS) present ways for students in the United States to create, present, respond, and connect to the world of art and artmaking. This article focuses on the practices of one visual arts educator, Educator A, who taught in a state-sponsored specialist music high school, guided by the following question: "How…

Place is defined by Lippard (1997) as "temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, and what will happen there" (p. 7). Thus exploring place extends…

This article adds to the small collection of art education studies on video games (Parks, 2008; Patton, 2013; Sweeny, 2010) by critically examining the association between violent video games, the U.S. military, and mental disability--from a critical disability studies perspective. Derby overviews the controversies surrounding violent video games…

For the last decade Michelle Kamhi has been prominent in her critique of contemporary art education. In her philosophy she positions herself as an essentialist who believes there are essential masterworks that define fine art, and the curriculum in art should teach fine art only. Her definition of fine art focuses on representation in painting and…

Advocacy is not new to art education. Over the years, Goldfarb (1979), Hodsoll (1985), and Erickson and Young (1996) have written about the importance of arts advocacy, but the concept of advocacy has evolved with the times. For example, in the 1970s, arts advocacy was described as a "movement" and brought together art educators,…

Art is visual literacy, some would say more basic than writing and speaking, because it is not hampered by the barrier of language. The process of creating a visual narrative and understanding visual literacy is multi-faceted. Because similar cognitive strategies are used in the practice of both visual and written literacy, incorporation of…

When displayed in museums and classrooms, Renaissance-era (1420-1600) painting, architecture, and drawing masterworks are often decontextualized from the social reality of the Academy system under which they were produced. For centuries, the artworks of the Italian Renaissance have seduced viewers with technical mastery, exquisite pigments, and…

In this article, the author presents a model for an undergraduate course in Art Theory and Criticism that includes a practical component in which students demonstrate their understanding of various theories of art by creating interactive installations that provide opportunity for discourse. Students then invited friends to the exhibition to…