How is art influenced?

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Balancing Skill-Building and the Formation of Ideas

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Balancing Skill-Building and the Formation of Ideas

Finding a balance between teaching specific skills and techniques with teaching about how to explore process in order to form and pursue ideas is not easy. If you teach in a culture (or department, or school, or district, or university…) that emphasizes skills and techniques as the “meat” of the curriculum, it’s probably a good idea to begin talking about the kinds of skills that everyone really considers “essential”.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Talking with Janine Antoni and Getting Set for NAEA: Part Two

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Talking with Janine Antoni and Getting Set for NAEA: Part Two

Part two of my recent interview with Janine Antoni in advance of her keynote address and workshop at the National Art Education Association’s annual conference here in New York from March 1-4.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art in the Elementary Classroom

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art in the Elementary Classroom

Julia CopperSmith and Maureen Hergott made some important points in last week’s interview and this week we take the opportunity to point out two of them regarding how teachers construct elementary art-making experiences and use documentation to influence their work.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working with Memory

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Working with Memory

Working with memory presents challenges, like many themes and ideas we choose to teach with, that are terribly difficult to get rolling without an organized, broad and juicy introduction. This week’s column explores how looking back can help with planning forward for better introductions to thematic units.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Taking Note

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Taking Note

This week I want to share what seems like a simple idea… While many of us insist that students keep sketchbooks or journals in our classes, it isn’t as popular …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Set for PS1’s “September 11”

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Getting Set for PS1’s “September 11”

In two weeks I am taking a group of students to visit the September 11 exhibition at PS1. Most of the high school students in these two classes have some …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Taking the Long Way Home: Working With a Theme in a Series

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Taking the Long Way Home: Working With a Theme in a Series

One of the students in my advanced classes is taking on the theme of “looking vs. seeing” for her first semester portfolio. She wants to explore the things people tend …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 New York Close Up

Teaching with New York Close Up: Lucas Blalock’s 99¢ Store Still Lifes

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21 New York Close Up

Teaching with New York Close Up: Lucas Blalock’s 99¢ Store Still Lifes

Lucas Blalock’s only plan is to work… preferably in the evenings. He deals with a set of parameters that his tools provide and brings things he purchases at local discount …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About Poverty and Homelessness

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About Poverty and Homelessness

This past Saturday, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote an op-ed piece called Them That’s Not Shall Lose which highlighted, as James Baldwin put it, how expensive it …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Installation in Installments

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Installation in Installments

Each year the graduates and upperclassmen I work with look forward to their final project as a way of leaving a stamp on the school itself. Students are asked to …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Ending in Catharsis, or A New Original

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Ending in Catharsis, or A New Original

Work by Laura Siragusa, Nyack High School, New York Spring is in the air. The end of the school year is upon us, or for those who bob and weave …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art: The First Three Years

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with Contemporary Art: The First Three Years

This week Teaching with Contemporary Art here on the blog turns 3. Frankly, I can’t believe that I’ve been writing this column for three years. At the same time, it …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Rethinking “The Critique”: Possibilities

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Rethinking “The Critique”: Possibilities

As promised in last week’s column I want to share some possibilities when it comes to facilitating in-progress critiques with students. Critiques that take place as an idea is taking …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Absolutely Uncertain

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Absolutely Uncertain

Since you can’t swing a cat without hitting a picture of Charlie Sheen at this point, I thought I’d choose a classic for today’s column. I mean, Art21 shouldn’t be …

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part I)

Turkish and Other Delights

Turkish and Other Delights | An Interview with Vasıf Kortun (Part I)

Perhaps more than any other individual, Vasıf Kortun has redirected the trajectory of recent Turkish art history. As Chief Curator and Director of the 3rd Istanbul Biennial in 1992, Kortun …

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

How Much Does Corn Matter? Glory and Humility in the Work of Eduardo Villanes

As I am grieving the disappearance of the Minimalist from the pages of the New York Times, I am also pondering Mark Bittman’s statement from his farewell column, “the continuing …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

When One Day Is Not Enough

Teaching with Contemporary Art

When One Day Is Not Enough

With all of the mandatory testing that students must be put through it’s no wonder that most kids, especially in elementary grades, receive classes in visual and performing arts one …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with David Wojnarowicz (and Not Teaching with the Smithsonian)

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching with David Wojnarowicz (and Not Teaching with the Smithsonian)

In light of the recent debacle at the Smithsonian involving the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly, I thought it might make sense to suggest some ways …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Need-to-Know (Basics)

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Need-to-Know (Basics)

On a recent visit to one of Lois Hetland’s classes at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Lois and I were engaged in a discussion about what teachers of …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About a Day Without…

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Teaching About a Day Without…

Today marks the observance of Day Without Art, a day when the arts community takes the time to remember and respond to the AIDS crisis and its impact worldwide. Day …

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art Education and Influence

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art Education and Influence

How is art influenced? What role does art education play in how artists form works of art later in their career? Recently, when I posed these questions to colleagues (both …