Illuminating New Landscapes in Art Education

More than 6 years ago, at the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, I encountered Zoe Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue.¹ I found myself in the middle of the work right after I had stepped into it without knowing in advance what I was stepping into. Like others at the museum on that day I suspect, I entered into the space, which Leonard had created by sectioning off an area of the fourth floor of the museum, in search of something to look at. But it was the space itself and what happened within it that was the subject of the work. Inside the dark chamber constructed by Leonard, which was illuminated only by the light that seeped in through a small opening (a tiny aperture) on the Marcel Breuer signature window of the museum, my eyes adjusted to the low light, and I realized that I was looking at an inverted image of the streetscape that lay directly outside the museum—a section of Madison Avenue. Leonard had created a camera obscura, and I was standing within it. The light that entered through the small aperture on the Breuer window brought the image with it, while it also, as mentioned, illuminated the space.

In this work that gave an account of the world from which it came, albeit not a wholly reliable account, and which offered a reprieve from that world—although, again, not one that was completely disconnected from it—nothing remained the same for long. Because it was a real-time projection, the image constantly changed as it composed and decomposed in correspondence with the streetscape outside. Even when changes were subtle and slight—and they were—they nonetheless reflected the change that was occurring in the light outside, the movement on the street, and the minor fluctuations occurring in the buildings opposite the museum. As I walked in and around the work, stopping and looking, looking up, down, and across the bounded space, at times sitting on one of the benches provided, I realized that I, too, changed during the time I spent in the work. Not only did my eyes adjust to the low light, but my thoughts wandered to how we see, how we perceive, and how we translate what we see into an image. And the effort that seeing takes was not lost on me in that space either.

Leonard had anticipated that this would happen to viewers, for she had made a series of camera obscura works before producing this one for the Whitney Biennial. In an interview with Elisabeth Lebovici,² she explained that being inside her camera obscuras “allows us to engage with our own process of seeing, to actually track our process of seeing” (Leonard & Lebovici, 2012, n.p.). Leonard continued, “We experience light, movement, color, contrast and shape, and slowly we resolve these elements into a picture” (n.p.). She further explained to Lebovici, “My curiosity about the camera obscura involves asking questions about how we see, how we look, and what we take for granted about sight. The camera obscura offers us a way of seeing that does not have to result in a fixed image—such as a photograph or a film” (n.p.). During an interview with Courtney Fiske, Leonard echoed this idea of how the camera obscura opens a critical space for “unpacking how we see” (para. 19), telling Fiske (2012), “What we see is dependent on the instruments that we use to look: on our eyes, and, in this case, on this lens and this room” (para. 26).

On reflection, it could be said that many factors contributed to the actualization of 945 Madison Avenue. Of course, the work relied on Leonard to initiate it in the first instance, to imagine and construct the space that it occupied, and to create an aperture on the Breuer signature window of the Whitney Museum allowing the light to come through and to create the image simultaneously. But the work also relied on the window itself and its location in the museum building. It relied on the streetscape outside, the movement on the street and in the surrounding building, as well as the changing light. And it relied on the curious, inquisitive, and patient observer within the work. Thus, it relied on a multiplicity of elements and occurrences for it to take form, and the form it took was neither guaranteed in advance nor stable in its existence (O’Donoghue, 2016). And so, rather than creating that image of the outside world—the one that appeared on the walls, ceiling, and floor of the bounded space established within the museum—Leonard created the conditions for the image to show up and appear as it did.

Thus, in producing the work, Leonard tapped into something that was already occurring in the world, with the result that the work she created revealed an aspect of the world that is available for seeing, but only under certain conditions. Thus, she showed us that the world could be viewed differently by creating conditions for it to show up otherwise and to appear in a way in which it is not usually given to appear. But, while the mode of capture enabled Leonard to capture what she did, it did not permit her to capture all aspects of the place directly outside the walls of the museum. For instance, it neither captured nor transmitted the sounds and smells of the street outside, or the temperature of the street during the life of the work. Neither did the mode of capture have the capacity to convey what it felt like to be on the street outside, in the company of others, many others, in the midst of an urban crowd. Leonard is aware of this. During the interview with Fiske (2012), she explained, “You’re not bringing the actual world inside, but rather, an image of it” (para. 25). Therefore, while the distinction between the outside and inside falls away to some degree in the work, at the same time, the distinction is ever more present because of what the work was and was not able to capture of the outside world. In some respects, then, Leonard engaged in an act of taking without removing.

In preparing this editorial, I was reminded again of this work by Leonard and my experience of encountering it. I sensed that the authors of the articles and commentaries in this issue of Studies in Art Education are doing something akin to Leonard. Through their research and writing, they are inviting us—their readers—to pay attention to aspects of the field and its activities that are present but not always visible. As explained earlier, Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue enables us to see an aspect of the world that is present but not immediately visible, for she creates conditions that reveal this aspect to us. Like Leonard, the authors in this issue bring aspects of the field into visibility through what they look at, how they look, the choices they make in their inquiry approaches, and the analytical practices they adopt and adapt. They seem to be saying by showing that it matters how we see, how we perceive, and how we translate what we see into written accounts for what can be said about the field. They also seem to be saying by showing that it matters for the field what we turn our attention to and how we give our attention to such matters—be they things that interest us or catch our interest. Like Leonard, the authors in this issue make space (intended or not) for the unanticipated, the unknown, the previously unseen, and perhaps, to some extent, the mysterious. This is particularly the case with Hayon Park’s, Albert Stabler’s, and Luke Meeken’s contributions.

For instance, Park’s account of being in the field—an account that focuses on one incident, a painting incident, that she observed and subsequently elaborated by thinking it with some of Jacques Rancière’s ideas—advances another way of paying attention to and understanding children’s artmaking practices. Her study of children’s artmaking practices brings some of their aspects and qualities to light that might otherwise go unnoticed and unacknowledged. Thinking with Rancière, Park sheds light on the complexity of what she witnessed during her fieldwork and encourages readers to look beyond quick and easy interpretations of what they see, observe, register, and notice.

Similarly, in his contribution, Stabler turns his attention to “the sentimental influence in art education,” tracing how it informs the principles, values, and intentions of art education in the present day in ways that are not immediately visible on the first encounter. Focusing on a handful of individuals—their work, commitments, and practices—together with some artifacts, and the study of one school—Virginia’s Hampton Institute—Stabler reflects on some of the broader impulses, intentions, desires, values, and assumptions that shape conceptions of art teaching, learning, and education in the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries and that come to the surface when these objects of inquiry are studied through the concept of the sentimental. Perhaps not entirely dissimilar from Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue, Stabler’s article reveals aspects of the field and the forms it has assumed in its development and expansion—aspects that are often overlooked or not noticed when other analytical lenses are employed in a study of the field. The act of studying aspects of the field through the lens of particular concepts—in this case, the concept of the sentimental—can illuminate it in ways that it has not been previously visible. And in his commentary, Meeken encourages art educators to explore, entertain, and adopt “historiographic modes that look beyond the linear and causal by mindfully constructing new temporalities.” Building on the work of scholars in the field who have modeled such approaches, he argues, “Historical visualizations can encourage histories not centered on the linear telos of building the future by describing its movement from the past.”

But I was also reminded of Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue for another reason when I sat down to write this editorial. When I encountered the work, I began to pay attention to how other museumgoers reacted and responded to it. Watching their movements, their gestures, their hesitancies, their patience, their activities of looking, as well as the length of time they spent looking, and overhearing their doubts and certainties, I became curious about the modes of participation they enacted within the work and the modes of participation that were available to them. Aside from wondering if and in which ways the act of experiencing the work would put them in contact differently with the world outside, I started to listen to the questions they asked. And they asked a lot of questions. It seemed that questioning was the dominant mode of engaging with the work. Asking questions about the work and of the work seemed to serve as a way of accessing it and registering how it was working on them. The most common questions seemed to focus on the origin of the image and its transmission: “Where is the image coming from?” “What is enabling it?” “What is its source?”

On reflection, many of the questions I overheard (or felt compelled to ask some viewers but did not) could easily fall within three of five types of essential questions that James E. Ryan (former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education [HGSE]) identified and elaborated in his short book Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions—a book that began as a graduation speech that was prepared and delivered to educators on the occasion of their graduation from HGSE in 2016.

The first of the five essential questions in life that Ryan identified is “Wait, What?” It is a question that seeks clarity and elaboration before any response is attempted or given. It is, explained Ryan, “the first step toward truly understanding something” (p. 26). The word “wait” placed directly in front of the word “what” suggests a temporary pause, a slowing down of sorts, a reluctance to rush ahead and assume too much too quickly. Asking “Wait, What?” invites further elaboration and explanation while encouraging one to resist jumping to conclusions prematurely. Ryan (2017) argued that asking the question, “Wait, What?” cultivates “the habit of understanding first and making judgments second” (p. 37). After recognizing the origin of the image in Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue, many viewers asked this question or variations of it. After recognition came curiosity.

Another essential question, according to Ryan, and one that is important here, is “I wonder.…” This is but the beginning of a question. But it is a beginning that works well when it is followed by the words “why” and “if.” Asking “I wonder why” and “I wonder if” generally puts us in relation to the phenomena that interest us in productive ways. The “why” demands some interrogation. In Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue, I heard viewers ask, “I wonder why the image of the outside environment is inverted when it is projected inside?” and “I wonder if there were two windows in this space with an aperture on each, what type of image might be available for us to see?” Thus, asking “I wonder if” invites one to think about what the thing might do differently, how it might react otherwise, should it be presented under a different set of conditions or circumstances. This question “I wonder if” invites an imaginative engagement with what is presented. Ryan (2017) suggested, “The very first step toward altering what you see is to ask ‘I wonder why’ and then to follow that question was another: ‘I wonder if’” (p. 50).

And for those who quickly moved through Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue without taking the time needed to study the work, the third essential question identified by Ryan might have been the most productive question to ask: “Couldn’t we at least.…?” “Couldn’t we at least wait to see what happens in the artwork?” “Couldn’t we at least pay attention to what the work of art is doing to us?” “Couldn’t we at least consider how the work relies on a whole range of factors to actualize itself?” For Ryan (2017), to ask this question is to commit to engaging with something that on the first encounter might seem impossible, or not worth the effort of engaging with it. The question, “Couldn’t we at least.…?” acknowledges that we can enter into something provisionally, with curiosity, but without being bound by the thing itself or by the conditions under which it is presented for consideration. As Ryan (2017) put it, “When you ask, ‘Couldn’t we at least … ’ you are essentially suggesting that you and others try to do something, whether it is to come to some agreement or to get started on something” (pp. 79–80). To ask this question, then, is to not give up on trying to understand before one takes time to explore what one is curious to learn about—more or otherwise.

Asking questions is what we do as educators and scholars. In our teaching and research, we regularly ask variations of the ones that Ryan identified. “Good teachers,” Ryan (2017) suggested, “appreciate that well-posed questions make knowledge come to life and create the spark that lights the flame of curiosity” (p. 14). Good scholars, too, appreciate the well-formed question, especially for where it can take them in their inquiries and what it can reveal. Indeed, the act of forming good research questions has been the subject of past editorials in this journal (see, for instance, Freedman, 2004; McRorie, 1996). Researchers know that to ask a question is to open a space for thought. Contributors to this issue of Studies in Art Education demonstrate this. To ask a question is to show an interest. To ask a question is to invite others to participate in one’s expanding and emerging understanding. To ask a question is to hold open a space for study, exploration, inquiry, and explanation. It is to shine a light on something and to bring it to attention through a particular set of conditions as a result. To ask a question is to search for something not yet known. As ways into understanding something, questions can connect us with phenomena of interest in particular ways, just as they seemed to do for viewers of Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue. Asking questions extends us into new or expanded areas of thought. The act of asking questions invites one to consider something in ways perhaps not previously studied. But, as the articles, commentaries, and book reviews in this issue demonstrate, the types of questions we ask also matter. The types of questions we ask reveal what we are curious about, what we might be able to find out, what we already know, and what we are open to knowing.

Questions too, as the authors of the articles and commentaries in this issue show, motivate research inquiries and animate them. They focus our attention. They can set us on paths of discovery that lead to new knowledge, insight, and understandings. In doing so, they also guide those very acts of discovery. They suggest inquiry approaches and methodologies. During the research process, questions carry researchers and participants forward, oftentimes suggesting new territories and offering invitations to cross other terrains. The authors in this issue seem to say by showing that we ask questions to gain information that will enable us to act more effectively, strategically, responsibly, or with responsibility. They demonstrate that in art education, we ask questions to better understand the field, or at least aspects of it, oftentimes in an effort to join the conversations started by others. We ask questions as we engage with others and to engage others. And we ask questions to find commonalities, to bridge differences, to extend understandings, to move toward common understanding without collapsing differences.

The authors in this issue ask questions about the conditions that shape educators’ curricular decision-making processes and guide their pedagogical practice. They ask questions and conduct analyses to identify the factors that contribute to student performance and achievement in state art assessments. They ask questions about how they can understand how children work with instructions without surrendering entirely to the demands of the one who gives them. And they lean on the work of others to help guide them in their queries and support them as they make inferences, theorize, and invite us—their readers—into a consideration of how the field shows up differently depending on how we approach it, with whom, from where, and from which ends.

In asking questions to the field, the authors in this issue approach the study of the field from a range of theoretical positions, viewpoints, and curiosities. In his commentary, John Baldacchino begins with a question in an effort to provoke discussion, or at least to open the space where a discussion about the nature, purpose, and scope of art education might be had. Authors are curious about which visions and versions of art education (Eisner, 2002) circulate in the field at the current time. This is what Joy G. Bertling and Tara C. Moore turn their attention to, as they study visions and versions of art education that inform curriculum design and pedagogical approaches to art learning and teaching. These visions and versions shape the types of artmaking processes that students experience and the types of artworks they get to see, study, and build attachments with. Not dissimilar from Leonard’s actions, Bertling and Moore capture such occurrences through the specific instruments of data collection and analysis that they use—the outcomes of which suggest that K–12 art education in the US is characterized by its responsiveness and receptiveness to social, cultural, and political concerns and conditions, even though they found that social justice–informed art education seems less visible than they expected. The concepts of visual culture, material culture, and critical multiculturalism continue to show up in much of what is taught in K–12 classrooms.

In asking questions of the field, the authors in this issue are also curious about the factors that shape children’s and young people’s performance in state art assessments. For example, as they present research that advocates for the importance of the arts in the education of young people (some of which instrumentalize the arts in school), Ning Jiang, Bradley D. Rogers, Xumei Fan, Xinxin Hu, Ashlee Lewis, and Bo Cai’s focus on the relationship between elementary students’ scores on a visual arts assessment in a southeastern state in the US and a range of school-level factors, such as school size, location, racial and ethnic composition, and poverty index. Their study, which they report on in their article in this issue, examined this relationship over a period of 5 years. The authors suggest that school-level factors do indeed impact levels of performance in visual arts tests, although not all of the measured school factors impacted performance in the same way or within the performance groups that the authors identified. Most importantly, the study points to factors beyond student capabilities and capacities that influence their performance in visual arts assessment. The data and findings offered by Jiang et al. will most likely serve to motivate other researchers to look closer and on a case-by-case basis at the nature and impact of school factors on student performance in art assessments, as well as the nature of the instruments that capture and evaluate student performance. As they recognize, all research is limited by the decisions made by the researcher about what to include, what to exclude, what to focus on, what not to focus on, which methodologies to use, and which conceptual frameworks ought to guide the work.

As Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue offers a reading of sorts of Madison Avenue (or more precisely, a part of it), the authors of the articles in this issue of Studies in Art Education offer readings of the field. Each article and commentary sheds light on how the field appears when viewed from a particular viewpoint or through a particular set of concepts or theoretical commitments. When attention is focused on one aspect of the field—its history, its appearance within curriculum models and pedagogical practices, its contribution to cultivating a politics of engagement, and so on—or when conceptual models of meaning-making are brought to bear on certain phenomena, the field shows up in ways that are particular to those conditions. Thus, focusing their attention on different components of the field, the authors bring those components into visibility through the conceptual and analytical frameworks they adopt that shape what they search for, find, explain, and theorize. But the articles also present as ways of looking at the field, highlighting certain aspects of it, aspects that might not always be readily available for viewing, aspects that become available in and through the conceptual apparatuses used to bring them into visibility. The book reviews written by Rah Kirsten and Manisha Sharma encourage us to look again, to look beyond the surface, and to pay attention to what the act of looking might enable.

As you read these articles, I invite you to think and consider how they are operating along lines similar to Leonard’s 945 Madison Avenue, insofar as they are illuminating the field from which they come in distinctive ways, and that they require your engagement and interest to take them elsewhere.

Notes

¹ I wish to extend my sincere thanks to Zoe Leonard for allowing me to include an image of 945 Madison Avenue (2014) on the cover of this issue of Studies in Art Education.

² A conversation recorded in Paris in 2012 and published on the occasion of an exhibition of work by Zoe Leonard at the Murray Guy, New York, from September 15 to October 27, 2012.