Nearly a half century ago, education philosopher Elliot Eisner charged that art educators were generally too fixated on art of the past (Eisner, Citation1972). Since then, many art education practitioners and thought leaders have focused on “the now” by producing art curriculum based on contemporary art practices, present-day social issues, and new technologies and visualities. If the past and the present are useful frames for developing art curriculum, then what happens when we focus on “the next”? How might we think about art curriculum of the future?
This special issue of Art Education is the first of a summer series in which authors explore, sketch, and test out art curriculum of the future. Curriculum futurities involve thinking critically and creatively about “possible, probable, and preferable futures” (Bell, Citation2017, p. xxx). Art curriculum futurities can draw inspiration from what came before to innovate and renovate curriculum frameworks for subsequent generations, looking back on the past, reflecting on the present, but also continuing forward.
For Mark A. Graham, arguments for arts integration, design thinking, and STEAM education emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration and problem solving to prepare students to work within a 21st-century capitalist economy, but what is missing from these discussions are the deeper purposes of art and education. “Deconstructing the Bright Future of STEAM and Design Thinking” reminds readers that art also has the power to “encourage rebellion, critical self-awareness, refusals, reconstructions, and provocations.”
Against the backdrop of present-day assaults on Black lives, Joni Boyd Acuff proposes Afrofuturism as a futuristic philosophy for art curriculum in “Afrofuturism: Reimagining Art Curricula for Black Existence.” This curriculum is one in which Black students are encouraged to see a futurity where they thrive not only as artists, but also in the world at large.
“How might we think about art curriculum of the future?”
“IT IS A GOOD TIME TO REFLECT AND PROJECT, TAKING STOCK OF WHERE THE FIELD HAS BEEN BUT ALSO IMAGINING AND LONGING BEYOND OUR CURRENT CONDITION.”
In “System Error: Versatility and Facility as Empowering Values for the Digital Arts Classroom,” Luke Meeken considers how new technological systems that are designed with a typical or “ideal” user in mind often produce disabling and disempowering experiences. By learning to hack digital tools and materials of the future, educators and students can creatively use, transform, and subvert digital technologies, ultimately making them more empowering and accessible for all.
Hilary Katz and Zachary Winegardner showcase C3, an iPad app designed to foster inclusive museum experiences in “Create, Connect, Contemplate: Engaging Digital Technology for the Future Art Museum and Curriculum.” Working together to develop digital interactives, this interactive media designer and museum educator explore the frontier of museums with the goal of addressing the 80% of museumgoers who visit art museums without ever taking part in guided tours and programs.
In “Critically Reframing Post-Internet Art Toward the Future of Art Education Curriculum,” Timothy J. Smith introduces artmaking concepts and practices for curriculum that actively embraces digital technologies. This futurity is synergistic in its approach to online and offline interactions, critical in how it takes up so-called foundations of art, and emancipatory in its centering of artist and student voices.
Kira Hegeman, Lynn Sanders-Bustle, and Christina Hanawalt examine how one prepares art teachers for a future that has yet to be defined. In “Toward Emergent and Relational Curricula: Engaging Preservice Teachers in Social and Interventionist Art Practices for an Uncertain Future,” they describe three examples of art interventions that lean into unpredictability and thereby open up new ways of working in school and community environments.
“Eco-Visualizations: Facilitating Ecological Relationships and Raising Environmental Awareness” features artists whose work breaks from prevailing human-centric cultural assumptions and makes ecological relationships visible. With these artworks, Kayla P. Dean and Joy G. Bertling demonstrate a place-based art curriculum and eco-art pedagogy that emphasize positive student relationships with the more-than-human world and empower students to work for environmental change.
We are now 20 years into the 21st century. It is a good time to reflect and project, taking stock of where the field has been but also imagining and longing beyond our current condition. This summer series of special issues on the future of art curriculum is one collective step in that direction.
References
- Bell, W. (2017). Foundations of futures studies: Volume 1: History, purposes, and knowledge. New York, NY: Routledge.
- Eisner, E. W. (1972). Educating artistic vision. New York, NY: Macmillan.