Art history’s agility: K-12 practices for higher education consideration

Abstract

As policymakers and other stakeholders continue to intensify their questions and critiques of art history’s place in the higher education curriculum in the United States (U.S.), researchers have not pointedly addressed its place in the K-12 curriculum. How has art history been incorporated into K-12 art classrooms in the past, and how is it being incorporated today? Is this more humanistic component of the K-12 art curriculum under the same duress as is art history on college and university campuses? This article examines the place of art history in K-12 art classrooms over time and notes that it has been emphasized during periods of concern for the U.S.’s position in global affairs (1960s and 1980s). At present art history in the K-12 classroom is integrated through field trips, within assessment, and in helping students gain new sociocultural perspectives. As we argue, art history’s agility in the K-12 art curriculum, in the past and present, can provide unique, and potentially insightful, perspectives to the conversations concerning art history’s diminishing significance in higher education and potential ways to align itself for future survival.

Keywords:

• Art history
• assessment
• curriculum
• higher education

Notes

1 The Getty Center for Education in the Arts was founded in 1982 “to improve the quality and status of arts education in America’s schools.” See Duke, L.L. (1988). The Getty Center for education in the arts and discipline-based art education. Art Education, 41(2), 7-12.

2 In Kansas, for example, the learning outcome is that “People develop ideas and understandings of society, culture, and history through their interactions with and analysis of art.” https://www.ksde.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket = kTy-djsyIb4%3d&tabid=631&portalid=0&mid=3081: 11. A cursory examination of many other states’ visual arts standards demonstrates a similar perspective.

3 See the recently initiated e-journal Art History Pedagogy & Practice (2016-present), a product of the successful Art History Teaching Resources website, for examples of the new teaching directions for the discipline: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ahpp/.

4 The previously discussed AP Art History course is an exception to this, of course, but it is an extra component, not part of the required core art curriculum, only offered at upper levels, and, even then, not offered at all high schools. The International Baccalaureate program and dual credit courses in art history are also options at the high school level, but the same limitations noted for AP Art History apply.