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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. Latest trends also include photography, video, film, design, computer art, etc.

Historically art was taught in Europe via the atelier Method 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. 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.

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.

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. Some assert that the core discipline of Western art education is the practice of drawing, a model which has existed since the Renaissance. This is an empirical activity which involves seeing, interpreting and discovering appropriate marks to reproduce an observed phenomena. It can be asserted that other art activities involve imaginative interpretation.^{[citation needed]}Others would assert though, that issue based approaches, such as a visual culture approach to art education, define K-12 art learning today.

Prominent models include:

• A sixfold model divided into "Creative-Productive, Cultural-Historical and Critical-Responsive” components in Canada
• Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE) came to favor in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s, and it focused on specific skills including techniques, art criticism and art history.
• Current literature in the United states has shifted away from DBAE but many classrooms still use this model. Others have shifted to visual culture and diversity models.
• Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) is a theory that began in the 1970s in the United States. TAB suggests that students should be the artists and so guided on their own individual artistic interests through technique lessons and critiques, while being exposed to art history as it relates to their own work.
• 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 articulation, between the different art discipline forms (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 often acrimonious 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 ^[1]. 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 cultures.

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.

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 the London Borough of Hackney to preserve the teaching of academic drawing.

The Netherlands

Art education in schools is in The Netherlands strongly improved by the founding of the Dutch Art Teachers Association in 1880 and their Magazine (in 1881). In the seventies of last century were national examinations common in almost all secondary schools. Over the years struggles and problems, discussions about the right way and fights for equal qualification supposedly coloured the history of art education in the Netherlands as in other countries. The details however are of great interest for who will compare these developments with those in his own country.The painter Maarten Krabbé (1908 - 2005) changed the whole approach towards children drawing and painting. With his books on how to educate children in their free expression (Hidden possibilities | Verborgen Mogelijkheden (8 volumes | delen), uitbeeldingsmogelijkheden voor jonge handen (Sijthoff, Leiden 1961)) he changed the entire educational landscape. He showed how to handle the very delicate talents of children and how to treasure these.

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.^[2] 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 of New York (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)^[3]

Enrollment 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^[4] including Art. Ask For More. ^[5], its national arts education public awareness campaign; Association for the Advancement of Arts Education; Arts Education Partnership.^[6];

Professional organizations for art educators include the National Art Education Association.^[7], which publishes the practitioner's magazine Art Education and the research journal Studies in Art Education; USSEA (The United States Society for Education Through Art) and InSEA (The International Society for Education Through Art)^[8].

Current Trends in Theory and Scholarship

The domain of art education is broadening to include a wider range of visual and popular culture. Current trends in scholarship employ postmodern and visual culture approaches to art education^[9][10]. Within the National Art Education Association, research and publications are being geared toward issues of learning, community, advocacy, research and knowledge^[11].

Art education programs at major research institutions that are addressing these trends in the United States include Florida State University^[12], Ohio State University^[13], Northern Illinois University^[14], and Pennsylvania State University^[15].

See also

External links

• Teaching Leonardo: An Integrated Approach at Convergence
• UNESCO portal about Arts Education
• International Society for Education Through Art

References