In the Shadow of Change

So much lurks in the shadows. On Wednesday, November 13, 2016, the day after the most recent presidential election in the United States, the students in a course I was teaching seemed unhappy, bewildered, fragile, scared, and uncertain. In other parts of campus, students exchanged jubilant high-fives, celebrating or exchanging congratulatory and hopeful pleasantries during their walks to and from classes. What happened? What changed? What did these students and millions of other people expect? Six months after the new president had been sworn in to office, members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned by way of a letter, in protest of comments the president made about violence that had erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia. The violence was the result of White nationalist demonstrations and attacks they inflicted on counter-protesters. The comments by the president would have the world believe there were many fine people on both sides of these clashes. Like patterns on quilts that marked paths to freedom on the Underground Railroad, the letter by the arts and humanities committee hid a message in plain view: RESIST.

“Change moves. Change is movement. Change is constant. Change changes constantly.”

Particular acts, rituals, or events are also moments of change. The changing of the guards or changing a soiled diaper are such examples, as they denote a transition in which what came before is outdated, fatigued, or worn out. Yet, change can also be a process. In some cases, when change is slow to come, it might be so incremental it catches subjects off-guard. Do lobsters in water that heats slowly to a boil know the hazards of such a process of incremental change? Then again, change as process can be taken up with the best of intentions—to change a set of habits, for example. Social and cultural change—like most changes in nature—are slow, deliberate forces. Change moves. Change is movement. Change is constant. Change changes constantly.

Even in the shadow of change, where facts do not seem to matter much anymore; where supporting claims with evidence does not transmit the influence it once did; when facts and evidence are presented, but they do not matter; journals like this one continue to seek support, clarification, justification, and citation to make strong cases. Peer reviewers still expect authors to support their claims with citations, examples, and evidence. But why do art education scholars stick to these established and revered conventions? Why do elected political leaders of powerful countries and their spokespeople no longer concern themselves with factual presentation of ideas? Fake news? Now more than ever, complexity and complication rule the day.

Art education research emerges from a growing collection of ideologies and methodologies informed by shifting social, cultural, political, and technological contexts. Increased attention to interdisciplinarity in art practice, pedagogy, and inquiry indicates how such changes influence existing assumptions, traditions, and visions for the field. Yet the very possibility of change can strike fear and resistance in the hearts of individuals content with the way things have always been or the way things used to be. Sticking to the status quo removes a fear of the unknown.

Keep in mind, change is inevitable and often the mere mention of the word evokes premonitions of radical shifts. The change that continues to cast its shadow on the current political, social, and cultural moment is popularly framed as divided and divisive. It is an ever-evolving constant, fueled by the inertia of long-standing biases and prejudices, by-products that foment polemical division and fear.

This is no lie: the world is experiencing political climate change, or as Charles R. Garoian states, “the mendacious political climate we are currently living in” (p. 190). Interrogating the “prevailing foundational ‘truths’ of art and its education” (p. 188) while resisting a sense of hopelessness, Garoian advocates for a speculative pedagogy in which “fabulation resists foundational assumptions and methodologies” (p. 192) as a duplicitous relationship, grounded in the prospect of making art education great again. Speculative pedagogy positions artists and teachers as authors of non-egocentric empirical truths. Such storytelling should not be confused with the telling of flat-out lies, however. In a land caught up in an inchoate post-truth era, one might wonder whether it is the shadow or the change that renders the free motionless and the brave speechless.

Research in art education is shaped increasingly from a range of unconventional and uncelebrated subjectivities, yet most histories of the field position Whiteness and its privileges as deep-rooted and undisputed. Situating Black Feminist Theory as an epistemological lens, Joni Boyd Acuff declares, “As a Black woman who consistently engages in research and academic discourse in predominately White dominated spaces, I have come to understand that the ‘production and consumption of knowledge’ is diligently guarded” (p. 202). Acuff suggests the shadow of change casts its restrictive umbral cover as a pattern of marginalization against individuals whose arguments, ideas, and perspectives are routinely silenced in the often-foreboding and White space of policy work; #BlackLivesMatter, within academia, and beyond.

Ubiquitous acts of sexual assault, gun violence, bigotry, and bullying are daily occurrences in U.S. society. The news media remind viewers that schools are not immune to heinous acts of violence and hate, most often perpetrated by men and boys. But what of the violence enacted by (mean) girls? Declaring schools as sites of identity conflict, Fiona Blaikie observes, “In the current post-feminist neoliberal climate, mean girls have materialized as a sexualized hyperfeminine, distinctively visible, media-fueled corporate entity in Western high schools and beyond” (p. 222). Blaikie employs a methodology composed of narrative inquiry, girl method, and feminist research in her investigation of Grace and Hayley, two high school girls caught up in mean girl culture and the politics of its sartorial aesthetic.

The ways in which social media has changed how information and interpersonal interactions are shared may not be fully understood for some time. Users of all ages access daily scores of images of food, cats, and selfies, as well as videos of police brutality and bigoted rants. For some people, the pervasiveness of digital photography pushes its technological and artistic antecedents into the shadows. Situated within a critical and pragmatic reflection on the colonizing history of photography in Western art history, Andrew Gayed and Siobhan Angus assert, “it is worth probing what a ‘world history’ looks like if the reference points are still deeply rooted in European frameworks” (p. 233). Conceived as a case study, Gayed and Angus seek to decolonize an undergraduate history of photography survey course to reveal ideological and methodological possibilities for teaching, learning, and research.

How dangerous are research methodologies? In what ways does a discourse of danger enable and inform understandings and practices of arts-based research? What role could danger possibly play in arts-based research? How might arts-based research be dangerous? Offering a keen review of literature as a close read, G. H. Greer and Lorrie Blair investigate, “social conditions that were created by metaphors of danger in arts-based research scholarship” (pp. 245-246). Employing a multifaceted lens, Greer and Blair examine metaphorical uses of physical, financial, and psychological harm located within a selection of peer-reviewed articles.

To be clear, some things must change. In his review of Transforming Our Practices: Indigenous Art, Pedagogies, and Philosophies, edited by Christine Ballengee Morris and Kryssi Staikidis, Kevin Slivka says, “There is no other text wholly devoted to Indigenous art, pedagogies, and philosophies intended to inform the field of art education, and it is this significant credit that sets apart this collection of voices” (p. 259). Written by Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors, this book, as Slivka makes clear, marks a change within the field, as it indicates a long overdue shift toward respecting indigenous ways of knowing, living, and learning.

Of course, another way to enact change is to do something different. For example, Amber Ward’s media review is unlike most reviews published in Studies in Art Education. Rather, Ward reviews the City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, and the entanglements among its visitors and learning media. As Ward states, “A review of the entanglement of an art museum as a learning text opens up new possibilities for how we come to know both media and learning” (pp. 261-262). This review may very well be a game changer should it serve as a catalyst for other reviews of art institutions.

Protests and marches, like those associated with the Arab Spring, the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, and the Women’s March on Washington, seem to take place with increasing regularity. Such organized events are staged often in opposition to ideologies of government, fueled by democratic ideals and the pursuit of equity and inclusivity. Karen Keifer-Boyd, Flávia Bastos, Jennifer (Eisenhauer) Richardson, and Alice Wexler declare, a “more democratic and productive notion of inclusion must include the perspectives of disabled people in curriculum through art, narratives, and terminology that convey inclusion as equitable, not ‘special’” (p. 268). As Greer and Blair did with the language of danger in arts-based research, Keifer-Boyd, Bastos, Richardson, and Wexler comment on how terms like inclusionism might function in pursuit of disability justice. As a demand for specific forms of action, these authors seek changes in how the perspectives of disabled people are taken up in curriculum, policy making, and research.

Optimism evokes confidence and enthusiasm for what might be. As something like a second editorial, Nadine M. Kalin’s commentary asks, “perhaps the shadow of change as identified for this special issue is not only the darkness the field labors under at this time… but also the shadow of the impasse that present circumstances and cruel optimisms offer” (p. 274). The shadow seems to change daily. Kalin’s reading of change in the field is reflective of the routine renegotiations and recalibrations by people who are under constant surveillance and face an unyielding onslaught of headlines, questionable ethical maneuvers, and offensive language uttered by people in positions of political influence.

When truth, fact, common sense, and decency are obscured within the shadow, ethics become a moving project rather than a dependable anchor of reality. What does change have to do with art education? One response to this question can be found in the tag line the National Art Education Association uses in its e-mail response to renewing members: “Together, we will embrace the unprecedented challenges and opportunities for visual arts education and 21st-century learning!” In other words, change is the context in which art education exists.

Ever present is change in art education. The field has cast its own shadows previously—ideologically, methodologically, politically, and otherwise. Changes in the field will continue. Yet to change for the sake of change seems shallow, particularly if potential negative consequences and collateral damage are not taken into consideration, and when steps to prevent such outcomes are left ignored.

Readers will note each contribution in this special issue reveals a particular aspect of the complex nature of art education. Careful observation will reveal deep-rooted assumptions about ideas and approaches to conducting research. Similarly, the current, changing moment is being defined by an ongoing audit of assumptions entrenched within contemporary society. While unique to those who exist within it, this is a moment that is neither passive nor linear. Rather, the current moment pulsates in countless directions, like the daily news cycle that publicizes scandal after scandal, lie after lie, obfuscation after obfuscation, deflection after deflection, and cover-up after cover-up. So much happens in the shadows of change.