Israeli art education imagined cartographies

Abstract

Our paper addresses the stated need for art educators to develop inquiries into the history of non-Western, non-Anglophone art education systems. In response, we look at data taken from the history of Israeli art education and the development of Israeli art curricula in order to offer a historical sketch of the development of school art curricula in Israel. We frame our sketch using the perspectives of multiculturalism and critical theory. In the course of our discussion we reference scholarship from North America and Europe. However, our focus is primarily on shifts in Israeli policy in the direction of acknowledging greater diversity and multiculturalism. We trace these themes, starting with pre-state Israel and concluding with contemporary Israeli concerns with equity and social justice. We note parallel concerns with the same social issues in scholarship from North America and Europe. The main purpose of this comparison is to bring attention to the “blind spots” and “black holes” in Israeli visual arts syllabi where both Arab and Jewish Eastern culture and esthetics have been overlooked. We note parallels between these omissions in the Israeli visual arts curricula and attempts to correct similar lacunae in North American visual arts education.

Keywords:

• Israel
• art education
• school curricula
• multicultural
• Mizrachi Jews
• Arab citizens of Israel
• Eurocentrism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Our research is limited to syllabi written in Hebrew since there are no separate Arabic text books for art and the Arab students usually learn in Hebrew. Arabic translation of art curricula has only been done since 2016.

2 Council of European Union. Declaration on Promoting Citizenship and the Common Values of Freedom, Tolerance and Non-Discrimination through Education. Eurydice: Brussels, Belgium, 2015. Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/education/news/2015/documents/citizenship-education-declaration_en.pdf

3 britannica.com/topic/kibbutz

4 https://theartofeducation.edu/2019/08/02/inclusivity-for-all-learners-in-the-art-room/

5 The scholarship about what is now called “the 1950s mistakes” in the absorption into Israel of the immigrants from Arab countries is substantial. See, for example, Zameret (2002) and Shenhav and Hever (2012).

6 Haim Finkelstein, now professor emeritus, established and held the Evelyn Metz Chair in Art History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He wrote several books on Surrealism and on Salvador Dali (1980, 1996, 1998, 2016). He earned his PhD at NYU, and was well acquainted with American art education theories. He was active in New York at the same time that Dr. Jaffe studied there and they shared the same notions about art education.

7 Personal correspondence with Sigal Barkai, an online interview with Finkelstein, Tel Aviv, December 20, 2020.