For art educators, teaching textual literacy can be a challenge. In a review of literature, Hall (2005) found that content area teachers (as opposed to teachers of Reading and English) did not feel qualified to teach reading and believed that students did not need reading instruction to be successful with texts from their specific disciplines. Fisher and Ivey (2005) point out that many content area teachers feel uncomfortable being called "reading teachers," and may believe that teaching textual literacy is the job of English teachers. O'Brien, Stewart, and Moje (1995) explain that when reading is conceived in very traditional ways, such as extracting information from journals and writing essays, many content area teachers see these strategies as a waste of time, irrelevant to their area of study, or too difficult to implement with the realities of secondary schooling. Other challenges include the uninteresting way that many textbooks attempt to integrate reading directly with content (Fisher & Ivey, 2005) and students' expectations of what type of learning should occur in specific subject areas, making them resistant to engage in activities that do not fit their ideas--such as reading in an art class (O'Brien et al., 1995). If art educators look at textual literacy through a functional lens, one that acknowledges the unique nature of their content area and allows them to consider nontraditional reading/writing materials, they can begin to teach their students to be textually literate in a meaningful and subject-appropriate way. This article contains ideas from the author's own classroom practice and research, for integrating functional literacy into the art classroom.