Art education

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For general education in the broad range of arts see arts education, for education in the performing arts see performing arts education

Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings.

Historically art was taught in Europe via the Atelier system where artists' took on apprentices who learned their trade in much the same way as any guild such as the Masons (stonemasons or goldsmiths etc). The first art schools were established in 400BC Greece as mentioned by Plato. During the Renaissance formal training took place in art studios. Historically, design has had some precedence over the fine arts with schools of design being established all over Europe in the 18th century.

Within art schools "visual arts education" encompasses all the visual and performing arts delivered in a standards-based, sequential approach by a qualified instructor as part of the core curriculum. Its core is the study of inseparable artistic and aesthetic experience and learning.

According to de Francisco, art education is a body of knowledge, experience, tradition and practice peculiar to itself, and also related to and a part of general education. It aims to satisfy an insistent urge, creative activity, and influence of society. Through the art program, the pupils are given experiences through which they can express themselves, solve problems, understand and appreciate their surroundings.

A number of other famous world contributors to art education academic theory include Cizek, Tom Hudson, Professor Louis Arnaud Reid, Peter Abbs, Professor Brain Allison, Rhasheed Araeen, David Aspin, Maurice Barratt, Edward De Bono, Martin Buber, David Best, Michael Buchanan, Ken Baynes, T. J. Clark, Robert Clements, R. G. Collingwood, Arthur Danto, Eliot Eisner, Edmund Burke Feldman, Hal Foster, Christopher Frayling, Michael Fried, Peter Fuller, Howard Gardner, Nelson Goodman, Clement Greenberg, Professor PH Hirst, Arthur Hughes, Rosalind Krauss, Suzanne Langer, F. R. Leavis, Victor Lowenfield, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, John Ruskin, Phillida Salmon, Roger Scruton, Brandon Taylor, Rod Taylor, David Thistlewood, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Richard Wollheim.

Education in art takes place across the life-span. Children, youth, and adults learn about art in community based institutions and organizations such as museums, local arts agencies, recreation centers, places of worship, social service agencies, and prisons among many other possible venues. Education in art also occurs in the home as well as through formal and informal apprenticeship programs.

1 Approaches
2 United Kingdom
3 United States
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Approaches

There are thousands of arts education curricular models or models for arts or arts-based professional development for teachers that schools and community organizations use. It can be asserted however that the core discipline of all art education is the practise of drawing, a model which has existed sinc ethe Renaissance. Here are three prominent models:

A sixfold model divided into "Creative-Productive, Cultural-Historical and Critical-Responsive” components in Canada
In the U.S.A., Discipline Based Art Education covers the same content in terms of four fields; Aesthetics, Criticism, History and Studio Practices
In the UK the art curriculum is prescribed by the government's National Curriculum.

In most systems, “criticism” is understood to be criteria-based-analysis established on acknowledged elements of composition and principles of design which often vary in their verbal articulations, between the different art discipline ambits (applied, fine, performing, & etc.) and their many schools. Other art educational systems include the study of Aesthetics, ontology, semantics, studio praxis (empirical investigation) and phenomenology. There is no set art education curriculum content - it is a process of continual cultural negotiation.

Some studies show that strong art education programs have demonstrated increased student performance in other academic areas, due to art activities' exercising their brains' right hemispheres and delateralizing their thinking^{[citation needed]}. Also see Betty Edwards' Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Support for art education, however, varies greatly between communities and between schools in various communities.

Art education is not limited to formal educational institutions. Some professional artists specialize in private or semi-private instruction in their own studios. One form of this teaching style is the Atelier Method. Another is an artist apprenticeship in which the student learns from a professional artist while assisting the artist with their work.

[edit] United Kingdom

Prince Albert was particularly influential in the creation of schools of Art in the UK. Prince Charles has created the The Prince's Drawing School in in the London Borough of Hackney to preserve the teaching of academic drawing.

[edit] United States

Main article: Art education in the United States

The study of art appreciation in America began with the Picture Study Movement in the late 1800’s and began to fade at the end of the 1920’s. Picture study was an important part of the art education curriculum. Attention to the aesthetics in classrooms led to public interest in beautifying the school, home, and community, which was known as “Art in Daily Living”. The idea was to bring culture to the child to change the parents.^[1] The picture study movement died out at the end of the 1920’s as a result of new ideas regarding learning art appreciation through studio work became more popular in the United States.

American educational philosopher and school reformer John Dewey was influential in broadening access to art education in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Since World War II, there has been an increasing in the academic and intellectual focus of artist training through colleges and universities displacing quaintly bohemian, craft-intensive schools like the Art Students League (Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko) or Black Mountain College (Robert Rauschenberg) or the Hans Hofmann School of Art in Greenwich Village. By the 60's, Yale had emerged as the leading American art academy (Chuck Close, Brice Marden, Richard Serra, Jennifer Bartlett and Robert Mangold)^[2]

Enrolment in art classes at the high school level peaked in the late 1960s—early 1970s, but with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (which retains the arts as part of the "core curriculum"), but does not require reporting or assessment data on this area there has been decline of arts education in American public schools. The United States Department of Education now awards Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination grants to support organizations with art expertise in their development of artistic curricula.

National organizations promoting arts education include Americans for the Arts^[3] including Art. Ask For More. ^[4], its national arts education public awareness campaign; Association for the Advancement of Arts Education; Arts Education Partnership ^[5]; and National Art Education Association.^[6]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

^ Smith, Peter (1986,Sept.) The Ecology of Picture Study, Art Education[48-54].
^ "How to Succeed in Art" by Deborah Solomon, New York Times Magazine. June 27,1999
^ Americans for the Arts
^ Art. Ask For More.
^ Arts Education Partnership
^ the National Art Education Association