A Sentimental Art Education

Abstract

Sentimentalism as a genre is known for its association with melodramatic 19th-century novels, such as Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Alcott’s Little Women. But, as a cultural tendency, sentimentalism can be found in a range of 19th- and 20th-century cultural, social, and political phenomena, with philanthropic and educational projects chief among them. The legacy of sentimentalism in art education needs to be recalled when attempts are made to consider race in relation to K–12 art classrooms, as well as with class, disability, and gender dynamics. In this article, I make reference to the Hampton Album, a series of photographs taken in 1900 by Frances Benjamin Johnston, and I focus on three major thinkers to begin assessing the sentimental influence in art education, and gesturing at a pedagogical approach that more thoroughly integrates the role of ongoing conflicts and the intransigence of imbalances in power.

Acknowledgments

This article was created in part through developing an interdisciplinary honors course on race and sentimentalism I led at Appalachian State University in fall 2019, and a related conference presentation during the same semester at the Southeastern College Art Conference.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ For example, the kind of social critique that Efland and Siegesmund would group with ethical or moral concerns can be distinguished from character development, in my view, owing to its outward orientation and collective nature. For my purposes in this article, it makes more sense to relate social justice to 20th-century therapeutic expressivism than 19th-century cultivation of virtue, although idealistic aims have long been touted in a range of curricular approaches. Additionally, the place of visual culture in Efland and Siegesmund’s schemes is nebulous, and so I do not address it in this article.