Articles by Joe Fusaro
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Speak About What’s Unspeakable
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Speak About What’s Unspeakable
In the contemporary art classroom, perhaps there is an opening to deconstruct what’s really behind our love of guns, the obsession with “killing”, and “hunting down” characters in things like video games? Can we make spaces where these things are discussed and responses are shared in order to educate a broader audience that really affects change?
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Guest Bloggers This Week: Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Guest Bloggers This Week: Teaching with Contemporary Art
This week I am pleased to say that the Teaching with Contemporary Art column some guest bloggers…
Julia CopperSmith and Maureen Hergott are both alumni of the Art21 Educators program and teach elementary art education at Scott and Westdale Elementary Schools in Melrose Park and Northlake near Chicago. Their work has been inspiring to all of us here at Art21 for the past two years, especially since they are finding ways to work with contemporary art and engage some very young students in the process.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Combining (Complicating?) Ideas
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Combining (Complicating?) Ideas
Years ago I had a professor who was a bit cruel when it came to giving feedback. But one piece of feedback he gave me has influenced my teaching, especially in units like this one. He once said, exasperated over my inability to get to the next step on a piece, “Joe, you call these ideas?? Put them together and make one good one!”
In the spirit of this advice which has resonated with me for years I have asked my own students to begin combining ideas in order to more fully explore and depict the theme and subject they have chosen.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on Visual Conversations
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on Visual Conversations
In my previous post two weeks ago I said that I was interested in encouraging students to draw relationships between works of art and to think about how context affects what we see. Can works of art “speak” to the viewer or have “conversations” with other works? If so, how? Today was the day, after a long Thanksgiving weekend, for the group to share works in progress and get some feedback from one another.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Spotlight Conversations
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Spotlight Conversations
During Art21’s yearlong professional development initiative, Art21 Educators, we ask that teachers coordinate a one-on-one or group conversation that allows them to reflect on and explore major successes and challenges …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Getting Set for Visual Conversations
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Getting Set for Visual Conversations
If you haven’t visited already, the Fisher Landau Center for Art is a wonderful oasis to add to the list of places you can see exciting work in Long Island City. This week, I am taking one of my classes to visit the current show, Visual Conversations. Through the visit I am interested in encouraging my students to draw relationships between works of art and to think about how context affects how we perceive what we see.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Now See This: Teaching with Hans-Peter Feldmann and John Baldessari
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Now See This: Teaching with Hans-Peter Feldmann and John Baldessari
I have always been interested in the way certain artists, more so than others, have the ability to take us by the hand (or the eye) and walk us through works of art very deliberately. Because the “subject” is often about the whole work and not a single focal point, these artists persuade us to compare and contrast, and see the small differences as well as the commonalities.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Feedback Control
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Feedback Control
Giving good quality feedback can sometimes make the difference between students completing mediocre assignments and high quality works of art. This week I want to offer some suggestions for what to do when students are “done” but we know they aren’t.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Exploding a Theme
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Exploding a Theme
This week began with one of my advanced classes looking into the paintings of season 6 artist, Rackstraw Downes. As students start up a thematic series of their own work I wanted to see if we could “explode a theme” and “frame” Downes’ paintings in three different ways- as a topic, a theme, and as a question.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Visionary Studios: Getting Started
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Visionary Studios: Getting Started
Anyone who knows me often asks about how I coordinate three jobs. I teach two high school classes and serve as department chair in my school district, work as Art21’s …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test This
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test This
This school year has started out like none other in recent memory. The fascination to quantify practically everything in education has now moved steadily into art education, as discussed in last week’s interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Here in New York and across the entire country art educators (well, all educators, actually) are being forced to administer pre-assessment tests that “establish a baseline” of “what students know and are able to do” at the beginning of a course.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part Two
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part Two
This week it’s my pleasure to share part two of our interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Many, many thanks to those who sent along such positive e-mails and messages saying they enjoyed the first half last week. I have a feeling you will also find part two inspirational…
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part One
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part One
This week it’s my pleasure to kick off a two-part interview with one of my favorite authors in the field of education, Jessica Hoffmann Davis.
Jessica Hoffmann Davis has published and lectured extensively on the role and promise of arts learning, drawing not only on her own and other current research, but also on personal experience as a visual artist, writer, and educator. While her popular book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts (Teachers College Press, 2008), proposes a “new and unapologetic approach to advocacy for the arts in education”, I originally came to admire her work through reading (and re-reading!) Framing Education as Art: The Octopus has a Good Day (Teachers College Press, 2005), where she challenges non-arts education to be more connected to and like the arts.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Uncovering Works of Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Uncovering Works of Art
Monday evening I had the pleasure of participating in a dynamite online conversation with our current group of Art21 Educators. We decided, based on some requests we received recently, to spend a little time actually looking at art together.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Building Trust On The Way In
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Building Trust On The Way In
Starting off each new school year, one of my biggest concerns in the first few weeks is getting to know my students better in order to build trust. Without trust students will not take the risks necessary to break free from the habitual and try new things, which teaching with contemporary art will ultimately call for.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ideas With Legs
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ideas With Legs
Because I so love questions and quotes, and use them in my own teaching to get students thinking about process, predetermined notions about contemporary art and even prejudices, this week I wanted to offer three dynamite thoughts to get students thinking out of the gate…
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with New York Close Up: David Brooks Tears The Roof Off
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with New York Close Up: David Brooks Tears The Roof Off
David Brooks Tears The Roof Off is an apt title for one of our most recent New York Close Up films this summer. Within the first 60 seconds of a …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Kids on the Beach?
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Kids on the Beach?
There are times when you just have to sit for a while in order to experience a show… and sometimes you get lucky and there are also benches in the picture. I got lucky on steamy summer day and both elements came together for a recent visit to Rineke Dijkstra’s retrospective at the Guggenheim, on view through October 8th.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Summer Talk
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Summer Talk
For as long as I can remember, interviews like those featured in Bomb, Harpers and Art in America have inspired me to reevaluate the kinds of things I assume in my own teaching and art making. Divergent perspectives, or perspectives that are close to my own but unfamiliar in some ways, have provided me with more than just stunning quotes to share with my students and ideas to meditate on in the studio. I find myself underlining, highlighting, bookmarking pages and sticking post-its all over the place (a well-loved book in my library looks like it’s been through hell and back).
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on the Art21 Educators Summer Institute
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on the Art21 Educators Summer Institute
This past Art21 Educators summer institute, which was recently held from July 2-10 here in NYC, just FLEW. Sixteen art, science, Spanish, English, special education, language arts and social studies teachers came together with us for eight days of workshops, conversations, artist visits, studio visits and museum visits in order to explore ways of utilizing contemporary art to foster student learning.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
TASK Unplugged
Teaching with Contemporary Art
TASK Unplugged
This year, to begin the fourth annual Art21 Educators Institute, we will start our nine days with Oliver Herring and TASK at Luhring Augustine Gallery in Brooklyn. In a year that has in some ways been about “restraints” inspired by Matthew Barney, we will be running TASK with three materials: pencil, paper and string.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
A Year of Contemporary Art in (and out of) Contemporary Classrooms
Teaching with Contemporary Art
A Year of Contemporary Art in (and out of) Contemporary Classrooms
This is part two of a three part series that will share the experiences of three Art21 Education staff members (Jessica Hamlin, Joe Fusaro, and Flossie Chua) after spending a year with a group of 16 incredible teachers. Each of us has a unique perspective on the past twelve months and this series will ruminate on what it means to teach with contemporary art, specifically contextualized by our experiences this year working with the Art21 Educators program.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Long Walk
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Long Walk
I see Richard Long’s “A Line Made By Walking” as a metaphor for teaching. He makes visible his process, which is quietly relentless. He creates order through a meditative act. He provides focus. He makes us see something quite simple in a completely new way.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test Driving the New Season 6 Educators’ Guide
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test Driving the New Season 6 Educators’ Guide
The new Season 6 educators’ guide is now available as a quick and easy downloadable PDF. As we celebrate the broadcast of our new season, I thought this week might be a good time to highlight some of what the new guide has to offer educators interested in teaching with contemporary art.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Persistence and Patience Paying Off
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Persistence and Patience Paying Off
It’s probably a good time for our semi-annual hockey post that highlights some bizarre (or perhaps, pertinent?) parallel between the New York Rangers and teaching with contemporary art. This post is devoted to persistence.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art Turns Four
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art Turns Four
No sooner are we celebrating our upcoming fourth year with Art21 Educators as I am reminded that the Teaching with Contemporary Art column also turns four this week. Looks like I’ll be playing the fourth horse in the fourth race this weekend. Last year I celebrated by looking back over the first three years but today I’d like to just look back over the past twelve months because it’s been quite a ride. Here are some highlights since last spring.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ten Years…… Right Between the Eyes: Zoe Strauss at the Philadelphia Museum
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ten Years…… Right Between the Eyes: Zoe Strauss at the Philadelphia Museum
Every once in a blue moon you get surprised by an exhibit that takes your breath away. Kiki Smith did it to me in 2006 and last year Glenn Ligon …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Speak About What’s Unspeakable
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Speak About What’s Unspeakable
In the contemporary art classroom, perhaps there is an opening to deconstruct what’s really behind our love of guns, the obsession with “killing”, and “hunting down” characters in things like video games? Can we make spaces where these things are discussed and responses are shared in order to educate a broader audience that really affects change?
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Guest Bloggers This Week: Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Guest Bloggers This Week: Teaching with Contemporary Art
This week I am pleased to say that the Teaching with Contemporary Art column some guest bloggers…
Julia CopperSmith and Maureen Hergott are both alumni of the Art21 Educators program and teach elementary art education at Scott and Westdale Elementary Schools in Melrose Park and Northlake near Chicago. Their work has been inspiring to all of us here at Art21 for the past two years, especially since they are finding ways to work with contemporary art and engage some very young students in the process.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Combining (Complicating?) Ideas
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Combining (Complicating?) Ideas
Years ago I had a professor who was a bit cruel when it came to giving feedback. But one piece of feedback he gave me has influenced my teaching, especially in units like this one. He once said, exasperated over my inability to get to the next step on a piece, “Joe, you call these ideas?? Put them together and make one good one!”
In the spirit of this advice which has resonated with me for years I have asked my own students to begin combining ideas in order to more fully explore and depict the theme and subject they have chosen.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on Visual Conversations
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on Visual Conversations
In my previous post two weeks ago I said that I was interested in encouraging students to draw relationships between works of art and to think about how context affects what we see. Can works of art “speak” to the viewer or have “conversations” with other works? If so, how? Today was the day, after a long Thanksgiving weekend, for the group to share works in progress and get some feedback from one another.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Spotlight Conversations
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Spotlight Conversations
During Art21’s yearlong professional development initiative, Art21 Educators, we ask that teachers coordinate a one-on-one or group conversation that allows them to reflect on and explore major successes and challenges …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Getting Set for Visual Conversations
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Getting Set for Visual Conversations
If you haven’t visited already, the Fisher Landau Center for Art is a wonderful oasis to add to the list of places you can see exciting work in Long Island City. This week, I am taking one of my classes to visit the current show, Visual Conversations. Through the visit I am interested in encouraging my students to draw relationships between works of art and to think about how context affects how we perceive what we see.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Now See This: Teaching with Hans-Peter Feldmann and John Baldessari
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Now See This: Teaching with Hans-Peter Feldmann and John Baldessari
I have always been interested in the way certain artists, more so than others, have the ability to take us by the hand (or the eye) and walk us through works of art very deliberately. Because the “subject” is often about the whole work and not a single focal point, these artists persuade us to compare and contrast, and see the small differences as well as the commonalities.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Feedback Control
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Feedback Control
Giving good quality feedback can sometimes make the difference between students completing mediocre assignments and high quality works of art. This week I want to offer some suggestions for what to do when students are “done” but we know they aren’t.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Exploding a Theme
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Exploding a Theme
This week began with one of my advanced classes looking into the paintings of season 6 artist, Rackstraw Downes. As students start up a thematic series of their own work I wanted to see if we could “explode a theme” and “frame” Downes’ paintings in three different ways- as a topic, a theme, and as a question.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Visionary Studios: Getting Started
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Visionary Studios: Getting Started
Anyone who knows me often asks about how I coordinate three jobs. I teach two high school classes and serve as department chair in my school district, work as Art21’s …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test This
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test This
This school year has started out like none other in recent memory. The fascination to quantify practically everything in education has now moved steadily into art education, as discussed in last week’s interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Here in New York and across the entire country art educators (well, all educators, actually) are being forced to administer pre-assessment tests that “establish a baseline” of “what students know and are able to do” at the beginning of a course.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part Two
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part Two
This week it’s my pleasure to share part two of our interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis. Many, many thanks to those who sent along such positive e-mails and messages saying they enjoyed the first half last week. I have a feeling you will also find part two inspirational…
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part One
Teaching with Contemporary Art
An Interview with Jessica Hoffmann Davis, Part One
This week it’s my pleasure to kick off a two-part interview with one of my favorite authors in the field of education, Jessica Hoffmann Davis.
Jessica Hoffmann Davis has published and lectured extensively on the role and promise of arts learning, drawing not only on her own and other current research, but also on personal experience as a visual artist, writer, and educator. While her popular book, Why Our Schools Need the Arts (Teachers College Press, 2008), proposes a “new and unapologetic approach to advocacy for the arts in education”, I originally came to admire her work through reading (and re-reading!) Framing Education as Art: The Octopus has a Good Day (Teachers College Press, 2005), where she challenges non-arts education to be more connected to and like the arts.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Uncovering Works of Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Uncovering Works of Art
Monday evening I had the pleasure of participating in a dynamite online conversation with our current group of Art21 Educators. We decided, based on some requests we received recently, to spend a little time actually looking at art together.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Building Trust On The Way In
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Building Trust On The Way In
Starting off each new school year, one of my biggest concerns in the first few weeks is getting to know my students better in order to build trust. Without trust students will not take the risks necessary to break free from the habitual and try new things, which teaching with contemporary art will ultimately call for.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ideas With Legs
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ideas With Legs
Because I so love questions and quotes, and use them in my own teaching to get students thinking about process, predetermined notions about contemporary art and even prejudices, this week I wanted to offer three dynamite thoughts to get students thinking out of the gate…
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with New York Close Up: David Brooks Tears The Roof Off
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with New York Close Up: David Brooks Tears The Roof Off
David Brooks Tears The Roof Off is an apt title for one of our most recent New York Close Up films this summer. Within the first 60 seconds of a …
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Kids on the Beach?
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Kids on the Beach?
There are times when you just have to sit for a while in order to experience a show… and sometimes you get lucky and there are also benches in the picture. I got lucky on steamy summer day and both elements came together for a recent visit to Rineke Dijkstra’s retrospective at the Guggenheim, on view through October 8th.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Summer Talk
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Summer Talk
For as long as I can remember, interviews like those featured in Bomb, Harpers and Art in America have inspired me to reevaluate the kinds of things I assume in my own teaching and art making. Divergent perspectives, or perspectives that are close to my own but unfamiliar in some ways, have provided me with more than just stunning quotes to share with my students and ideas to meditate on in the studio. I find myself underlining, highlighting, bookmarking pages and sticking post-its all over the place (a well-loved book in my library looks like it’s been through hell and back).
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on the Art21 Educators Summer Institute
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Reflecting on the Art21 Educators Summer Institute
This past Art21 Educators summer institute, which was recently held from July 2-10 here in NYC, just FLEW. Sixteen art, science, Spanish, English, special education, language arts and social studies teachers came together with us for eight days of workshops, conversations, artist visits, studio visits and museum visits in order to explore ways of utilizing contemporary art to foster student learning.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
TASK Unplugged
Teaching with Contemporary Art
TASK Unplugged
This year, to begin the fourth annual Art21 Educators Institute, we will start our nine days with Oliver Herring and TASK at Luhring Augustine Gallery in Brooklyn. In a year that has in some ways been about “restraints” inspired by Matthew Barney, we will be running TASK with three materials: pencil, paper and string.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
A Year of Contemporary Art in (and out of) Contemporary Classrooms
Teaching with Contemporary Art
A Year of Contemporary Art in (and out of) Contemporary Classrooms
This is part two of a three part series that will share the experiences of three Art21 Education staff members (Jessica Hamlin, Joe Fusaro, and Flossie Chua) after spending a year with a group of 16 incredible teachers. Each of us has a unique perspective on the past twelve months and this series will ruminate on what it means to teach with contemporary art, specifically contextualized by our experiences this year working with the Art21 Educators program.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Long Walk
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Long Walk
I see Richard Long’s “A Line Made By Walking” as a metaphor for teaching. He makes visible his process, which is quietly relentless. He creates order through a meditative act. He provides focus. He makes us see something quite simple in a completely new way.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test Driving the New Season 6 Educators’ Guide
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Test Driving the New Season 6 Educators’ Guide
The new Season 6 educators’ guide is now available as a quick and easy downloadable PDF. As we celebrate the broadcast of our new season, I thought this week might be a good time to highlight some of what the new guide has to offer educators interested in teaching with contemporary art.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Persistence and Patience Paying Off
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Persistence and Patience Paying Off
It’s probably a good time for our semi-annual hockey post that highlights some bizarre (or perhaps, pertinent?) parallel between the New York Rangers and teaching with contemporary art. This post is devoted to persistence.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art Turns Four
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Teaching with Contemporary Art Turns Four
No sooner are we celebrating our upcoming fourth year with Art21 Educators as I am reminded that the Teaching with Contemporary Art column also turns four this week. Looks like I’ll be playing the fourth horse in the fourth race this weekend. Last year I celebrated by looking back over the first three years but today I’d like to just look back over the past twelve months because it’s been quite a ride. Here are some highlights since last spring.
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ten Years…… Right Between the Eyes: Zoe Strauss at the Philadelphia Museum
Teaching with Contemporary Art
Ten Years…… Right Between the Eyes: Zoe Strauss at the Philadelphia Museum
Every once in a blue moon you get surprised by an exhibit that takes your breath away. Kiki Smith did it to me in 2006 and last year Glenn Ligon …
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