Historying the Past: New Histories in Art Education

Abstract

Evolutions within the field of historiography have been followed closely by historians of art education, and in recent years, a shift to arts-based constructions of history has radically redefined art education history. The question of how to do this new kind of history, both methodologically and theoretically, has been addressed periodically in art education literature. In the following article, I will first provide a review of key literature from the past 30 years, chronicling a shift toward more artful histories, and then introduce recent historiographic theory as a way to articulate the practice of historying the past, taking as an example the art department at Central Technical School in Toronto, Canada. Bringing theory and practice together creates a synergistic link between the concept of new histories and the unique positioning of an art education historian.

Notes

¹ Sullivan’s use of braided is informed by Murray Gell-Man’s (1994) conception of plectics. Plectics is a broad transdisciplinary subject covering aspects of simplicity and complexity as well as the properties of complex adaptive systems, including composite complex adaptive systems consisting of many adaptive agents.