Explainers: Visual/material culture

Visual/material culture, or awareness of visual/material culture, is one of the top five highest-ranked focuses of art classes in Melody Milbrandt’s “Visual Art Curricula, Art Teacher Goals, and Instructional Time: Findings from an International Survey” (2015), and was one of the three most emphasized approaches in Joy G. Bertling and Tara C. Moore’s “The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey” (2021). 

Speaking from personal experience, visual culture, semiotics, and the sublime have been challenging subjects, which is why I wanted to read Nicholas Mirzoeff’s An Introduction to Visual Culture. It has been a good read, with Mirzoeff providing engaging touchpoints for readers to enter into the discussion, amid the dense language and theory of the field. 

I classify An Introduction to Visual Culture as a foundational work, but because it has been a fairly dense reading experience, and because Mirzoeff has offered several interesting frameworks in the first twenty pages of the book, I thought to post about a small section of this book in the explainers tag. 

In his introduction, Mirzoeff discusses Martin J. Powers’ idea of “a fractal network.” Mirzoeff goes on to advocate for people to “[recast] visual culture as fractal, rather than linear” (1999, p. 25). Despite its connection to chaos theory and mathematics, Mirzoeff’s fractal framework has been one of the more accessible ideas so far. Comparing visual culture to the Mandelbrot set, he explains that visualizing visual culture as a fractal, which produces new patterns the closer you look, reflects the fact that visual culture is made of plural realities, not just the white, Western one that has been the only reality that is represented in some academic setting. 

Expect a full post on An Introduction to Visual Culture in the foundational works tag soon, but in the meantime, enjoy this video of someone zooming in on the Mandelbrot set for sixteen minutes. 

Bertling, Joy G., and Tara C. Moore. “The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey.” Studies in Art Education, vol. 62, no. 1, Jan. 2021, pp. 23–46. 

Milbrandt, Melody K., et al. “Visual Art Curricula, Art Teacher Goals, and Instructional Time: Findings from an International Survey.” International Journal of Education through Art, vol. 11, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 137–56. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/eta.11.1.137_1.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas. An Introduction to Visual Culture, 1999, pp. 24-25. 

Explainers: Community-based art education

While not one of the most popular, or least popular, approaches in the current art education landscape, community-based art education, or CBAE, is still relatively common (Bertling and Moore, 2021). Because of its unique place among other approaches, a digestible, compelling framework for CBAE might be useful. Also, in conversation with an experienced high school art teacher, student connections with local professional artists were valued as highly important; a statement echoed in the following framework (High school art educator, June 2021).  

Flávia M.C. Bastos’ “Making the Familiar Strange: Teachers' Interpretations of Community Art: A Case Study” is a 15-page explanation of the Making the familiar strange framework. Drawing upon Paulo Freire’s emancipatory ideas, Bastos’ framework illuminates the value of the art-making scenes in communities that are typically left out of the academic or critical conversation. Making the familiar strange encourages teachers and students to critically examine what is not considered art, to see that it is, in fact, art (Bastos, 1999, p. 11). 

What students are examining is local art; in a case study described by Bastos, which aligned with her overarching point, students partnered with a local furniture factory, taking part in a project where they designed and built their own chairs, and even took part in simulated job interviews (1999). 

An unfinished manuscript of “Making the Familiar Strange” is available online, courtesy of Iowa Research Online, at this address. The article is also collected in Contemporary Issues in Art Education, is available at 10 Michigan libraries, including Grand Valley State University, Calvin University, Michigan State, University of Michigan, Northern Michigan, and Wayne State. Used copies are also available for purchase on Amazon.com. 

Bastos, Flavia M.C. (1999). Making the Familiar Strange: Teachers' Interpretations of Community Art: A Case Study. Contemporary Issues in Art Education, 70-83.

Bertling, J. G., & Moore, T. C. (2021). The U.S. K–12 Art Education Curricular Landscape: A Nationwide Survey. Studies in Art Education, 62(1), 23–46. 

Explainers: "Is Your Continuous Improvement COLORBLIND?"

Sarah Fiarman, Kristen Kyles-Smith, and Alison Lee's "Is Your Continuous Improvement COLORBLIND?" is a helpful, relatively quick read that could be helpful for school administrators and researchers in schools; however, it also clearly communicates how racial bias impacts a school's ability to help its students. So if you're working in a school, the topics discussed in the article probably affect you. 

Fiarman, Kyles-Smith, and Lee identify the colorblindness with which many schools approach continuous improvement and problem-solving, and offer a framework to help teachers and administrators work towards equity these tools focus on race, but could be used to address many different kinds of discrimination. 

1. Disaggregate data on race
2. Focus on impact
3. Avoid a deficit mindset
4. Identify root causes & ways to change

Unfortunately, this article is not easily accessible via open access; however, if you are a student or faculty at GVSU, you can read it after copy-pasting the title into the library's main search function. You can also find open access readings on continuous improvement in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database. 

Fiarman, S., Kyles-Smith, K., & Lee, A. (2021). Is Your Approach to Continuous Improvement COLORBLIND? Educational Leadership, 78(6), 16–21.