Abstract
This chapter examines the different purposes motivating art education that have required different sets of knowledge, attitudes toward skill, understandings of the creative process, and constructions of taste. Through a tracing of three distinct historical forms of Western visual arts education—the guilds and academies of early-modern Europe; the anti-academic fervor of dropouts, rejects, and rebels; and the normal and public schools of the industrial West—this chapter examines both the lived reality of curricula and how curricula defined art learning through time. This chapter closes with an examination of two alternate paths of curriculum development. The first, established in Studio Thinking and connected to the Common Core State Standards movement and the National Core Art Standards, utilizes the cognitivist “habits of the mind” framework. The second, “habits of body,” implicates the material, experiential, and embodied aspects of art learning as vital avenues of curricular exploration. Galileo Galilei gets a mention, Manet’s Olympia makes an appearance, and Walter Smith makes his mark.
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- 1.
Usually excluding women, Jews, Romani, bastards, and other undesirables.
- 2.
They were nearly invariably men.
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Regardless of skill.
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With capped wages.
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Not including the masterpiece.
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Or self-entitled purchasers.
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Sound familiar?
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The Accademia had dropped its association with the Compagnia di San Luca by that point.
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Whose brilliant efforts would continue to remain overlooked and unacknowledged.
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Especially when they would not hire him at age 24 when he wasn’t famous but had the same skills to offer.
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With academy approval.
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Eventually.
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They were often accompanied by artists and architects who could augment their education in matters of taste.
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Balvaird also created the most frequently used itinerary for traveling through Italy.
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They were nearly invariably men.
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Is there an echo in here?
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Albeit poorly.
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And a pleasant stay in Rome.
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If you say it right, it comes out as the Mayonnaise Olympia, which is the kind of condiment I want on a sandwich.
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Most often fully clothed and frequently with a guitar in hand.
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An education that she was notably never provided by the artists she posed for.
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And the influx of art education into public schools.
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Literally translated “art academies.”
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Schools of arts and crafts.
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Schools of applied arts.
- 26.
Ewart would later champion free public libraries, historical marker plaques, the metric system, and the abolition of capital punishment.
- 27.
Dyce was himself something of an academic rebel and an early associate of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
- 28.
Often called the Crystal Palace Exhibition.
- 29.
Not coincidentally, the names of all those whose highly developed, South-Kensington-trained craftsmanship brought Morris’s designs to life would be forgotten.
- 30.
And entirely dependent on the manufacture, marketing, and sale of art supplies and textbooks.
- 31.
In keeping with the belief that allowing the poor to have the same sorts of opportunity as the wealthy would be socialism at its worst.
- 32.
If there are any.
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Babulski, T. (2019). What Art Teaches. In: What Art Teaches Us. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27768-0_2
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