For the 1990s and beyond, backgrounds, experiences, needs of all people, along with the appropriate context will provide significant bases for transforming the curriculum. This paper contends that the paradigm for art in the elementary schools must include the interplay of this context with a commitment to "re-viewing" the foundations for and contemporary developments in the four constituent disciplines of art making, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics. These four components of discipline-based art education (DBAE) will lead to more effective elementary-classroom teaching if students learn how to study and create art forms to be valued, in much the same way they should have value themselves for their independent form, for their membership in one of many histories of similar forms, and for their contribution to the multicultural intellectual history of a given period. Elementary teachers should enable students to establish the behavior and to develop the perceptual skills for learning to see visually and culturally. A 38-item bibliography is included. (Author/DB)