Complicated, Crucial Conversations

As I entered the installation, in a gallery the length of a football field, morning sun glittered on twisting strands of shiny, die-cut shapes. Many of the metallic spinners were circular, but teardrops hung here and there. As I walked down the stairs, some shapes suggested sunbursts or multi-petaled blossoms; other repeated circles—like targets—surrounded silhouettes of guns. Walking through the sparkling strings, I approached a cloudscape where masses of crystals and chandeliers seemed to support a dense collection of found objects: gramophone horns like red morning glories; artificial fruit, flowers, and birds; ceramic owls; gilded pigs; black-faced lawn jockeys; and more. Four steep metal stairways invited visitors to climb up for a closer look. Beyond this nest, strands of colorful beads woven into nets suspended from the ceiling and back wall formed webs, mounds, and cave-like spaces.

Nick Cave’s installation Until at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams) opened in October 2016 and will run until September 2017. The title plays “on the phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ or as is the case here, ‘guilty until proven innocent’” (Markonish, 2016, n.p.). Wall text explains the installation takes viewers inside the belly of one of Cave’s Soundsuits—wearable art originally intended to protect the African American artist against the violence of the 1992 Rodney King beating. As a White visitor entering Until, I am implicated in racism as I see the racist memorabilia crowded above the crystal cloud and the flat shiny guns centering some spinners (Loos, 2016). Cave invites visitors to reflect on his question: “Is there racism in heaven?” as they experience glistening beauty and vulnerability to racial prejudice (Markonish, 2016, n.p.).

Cave designed the installation to be a performance space as well as a site for community engagement: “a provocative stage for performance and discussion, a safe space for fostering engagement and furthering understanding” (Kors, 2016, n.p.). He envisions racist representations above the crystal cloud transformed into agents of change. Admitting the work is difficult, Cave hopes compassion in the work will resonate with compassion inside each visitor. Until invites all visitors, Black and White, to participate in crucial conversations, to hear pain and feel community (Kors, 2016).

A year ago, my editorial for the second issue of volume 57 of Studies invited readers to consider each article an invitation to participate in conversations in art education (Stankiewicz, 2016). The conversations in the current issue are challenging when authors want readers to understand the contributions made by Black art educators in spite of oppression in segregated schools. Crucial conversations are “day-to-day conversations that affect your life” when two or more people bring varied opinions and strong emotions into situations with high stakes (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, & Switzler, 2002, p. 1). For example, what conversations occurred when an African American artist, hired to teach drawing in segregated schools in the nation’s capital, introduced innovative approaches to visual arts before the curriculum in White schools permitted such instruction? Or, what conversations surrounded another African American artist who openly criticized White patrons of Black art, gaining a reputation as a trouble-maker? These artist-educators did not avoid the crossroads of crucial conversations; they faced difficult issues and worked for change.

Curriculum theorist William Pinar argues that curriculum in action is a complicated conversation engaging multiple references, where historical figures and unnamed people, politicians and parents, the living and the dead engage with the “process of becoming” (Pinar, 2012, p. 43).¹ Pinar’s method references the etymological roots of key concepts. Complicated connotes folding together, like the draped networks of beads at the far end of Cave’s Until. The cross-shape at the root of crucial resonates with the four ladders leading up to the central cloudscape of crystals and racist memorabilia. As I explored Cave’s Until, I wondered how the art educators whose histories are told in this issue might have responded to his invitation to hear pain and feel community.

Nick Cave Until Exhibition. Photograph by James Prinz Photography. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

Some articles in this issue were originally submitted in response to the call for historical research that generated the historical theme in Studies, 58(1). This issue extends that theme in an article by one of the most prominent historians of art education, articles arguing for reclamation of hidden women in the field, a commentary by a noted researcher on artistic development, and a review of a recent book on the youthful work of Israeli artists.

The opening article is based on Paul E. Bolin’s Studies in Art Education Invited Lecture presented at the 2016 NAEA National Convention in Chicago: “‘For the Future, For the Unborn’: Considerations of History and Historians for Art Educators, Generated From George Orwell’s Novel 1984.” Bolin suggests art educators consider historical research in relation to Orwell’s ideas on history, historical memory, and the historian. He explores five “essential ideas” (p. 88): (1) the uncertainty of the historian in the face of limited companionship and complex issues of time and interpretation; (2) how the historical impulse is motivated by questions (especially why questions) that compel research quests; (3) the power of the historian to create fictional, or at least false and inaccurate, actors or events that readers should question; (4) the responsibility of the historian to leave an accurate, meaningful record that others might build on in order to correct misinterpretations that become myths; and (5) the connectivity of the historian when physical senses are used to move beyond documentary evidence.

In “Hunting for Hunster: A Portrait of Thomas Watson Hunster, Art Education Pioneer in the District of Columbia,” Pamela Harris Lawton draws on archival sources, her family heritage, and Critical Race Theory to portray Thomas Watson Hunster (1851-1929), an African American art educator who taught in segregated schools. Lawton explains drawing had been introduced into Black schools two years before a drawing teacher was hired for White schools. The third drawing teacher hired for Black schools, Hunster modeled approaches to teaching art that, Lawton argues, anticipated qualities of good art education today.

David Burton and Pearl Quick argue “Sara Joyner: The First State Art Supervisor in Virginia” stood out from her peers for vision and determination. Sara Cross Joyner (1900-1967) possessed charisma and a desire for social justice. Born into White privilege in Richmond, she saw herself as a creative person, arts advocate, and change agent. When Virginia established its state art supervisor position—only the fifth such position in the United States—in 1945, access to art education was limited even in White schools. Two years later, the state education department approved a second position, “a Negro Assistant Supervisor of Art Education,” filled by African American art educator Mary Godfrey (p. 119). The two women worked closely together until both moved into higher education.

Sharif Bey describes Augusta Savage (1892-1962) as a member of the Black Academy, a cadre of professional artists and role models who challenged racism by combining aesthetics with political awareness and social responsibility. To write “Augusta Savage: Sacrifice, Social Responsibility, and Early African American Art Education,” Bey investigated Savage’s papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in order to understand how Savage moved from artist to educator within the early-20th-century political landscape. Savage’s sculpted portraits of W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey led Jacob Lawrence to describe her as a Black nationalist, but her work did not follow expectations for an Africanist or primitive style. Although Savage was regarded as a troublemaker by Whites, she became assistant supervisor for the Federal Arts Program during the Depression, and was commissioned to create a major sculpture for the 1938 New York World’s Fair.

Ami Kantawala’s interest in Mabel D’Amico was sparked by visiting her eastern Long Island home. Kantawala used oral history to gather data for “Mabel D’Amico (1909-1998): Reminiscences From the Past,” interviewing two people who knew D’Amico well. Kantawala positions Mabel, with her husband Victor, among those artist-teachers advocating creative self-expression during the interwar years. After Victor’s death in 1987, Mabel seemed more liberated and outgoing, experimenting with found objects and innovative techniques, until her health failed. Kantawala argues that Mabel D’Amico was extraordinary; her life and pedagogical work merit further study.

Originally published in 1980, Howard Gardner’s Artful Scribbles drew on observations and documentation of his children’s drawings. Today, Gardner watches his grandchildren draw while continuing to believe the arts offer a universal lens into human development. In his Commentary, “Reflections on Artful Scribbles: The Significance of Children’s Drawings,” the creator of the theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983) explains how his ideas on the developmental course of children’s drawing have changed to focus more on domain-specific factors and cultural differences. If he were to rewrite Artful Scribbles today, he would examine ways even young children interact with digital devices.

In the review “Childhood Work of Artists,” David Pariser compares Ayala Gordon’s revised exhibition catalog with other studies of juvenilia by adult artists, including his own research. In focusing on naturalistic representation as an index of artistic potential, Gordon fails to acknowledge multiple branches and pathways for artistry. While praising Gordon’s work for including examples by female artists, Pariser notes that citing Csikszentmihalyi’s systems view of creativity, or Zimmerman’s work on creativity, might have enriched her interpretation.

Like Cave’s installation, historical research raises questions that encourage us to reflect on present and future, as well as the past. When brought into crucial, complicated conversations, historical narratives—like contemporary artworks—can help readers empathize with the pain of others, consider varied points of view across diverse communities, and decide to become agents of change who challenge social inequities through their work in art education. The metal spinners glittering in the sun invite reflections on racism, oppression, and beauty in art and society.

Notes

¹ My thanks to B. Stephen Carpenter, II, for reading an earlier draft of this editorial and suggesting that I read Pinar (2012).