Art Education - United States

United States

The study of art appreciation in America began with the Picture Study Movement in the late 19th century and began to fade at the end of the 1920s. Picture study was an important part of the art education curriculum. Attention to the aesthetics in classrooms led to public interest in beautifying the school, home, and community, which was known as “Art in Daily Living”. The idea was to bring culture to the child to change the parents. The picture study movement died out at the end of the 1920s as a result of new ideas regarding learning art appreciation through studio work became more popular in the United States.

American educational philosopher and school reformer John Dewey was influential in broadening access to art education in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Since World War II, artist training has moved to colleges and universities, and contemporary art has become an increasingly academic and intellectual field. Prior to World War II an artist did not usually need a college degree. Since that time the Bachelor of Fine Arts and then the Master of Fine Arts became recommended degrees to be a professional artist, facilitated by "the passage of the G.I. Bill in 1944, which sent a wave of World War II veterans off to school, art school included. University art departments quickly expanded. American artists who might once have studied at bohemian, craft-intensive schools like the Art Students League, Black Mountain College, or the Hans Hofmann School of Art in Greenwich Village; began enrolling at universities instead. By the 60s, The School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, and Cooper Union in New York City and other art schools across the country like the Kansas City Art Institute, the San Francisco Art Institute, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Princeton and Yale had emerged as the leading American art academies. This trend spread from the United States around the world.

Enrollment in art classes at the high school level peaked in the late 1960s—early 1970s. With No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (which retains the arts as part of the "core curriculum", but does not require reporting or assessment data on this area) there has been additional decline of arts education in American public schools. The United States Department of Education now awards Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination grants to support organizations with art expertise in their development of artistic curricula. After 2010, an estimate of 25% of the nation's public high schools will end all art programs.

National organizations promoting arts education include Americans for the Arts including Art. Ask For More., its national arts education public awareness campaign; Association for the Advancement of Arts Education; Arts Education Partnership.;

Professional organizations for art educators include the National Art Education Association, which publishes the practitioner-friendly journal Art Education and the research journal Studies in Art Education; USSEA (the United States Society for Education through Art) and InSEA (the International Society for Education through Art).

Education through the visual arts is an important and effective influence in allowing students, from an early age, to comprehend and implement the foundational democratic process emphasized within the United States societal structure.

On a fundamental level, democracy requires that individuals within a society believe in a philosophy of equality, and it will not prevail if these ideas are not recognized. In a society established on a democratic process, individuals believe that they can impact the world around them. They believe that a common goal, for the betterment of their existence, can be achieved. And they realize that, while every human being perceives reality in a way that is unique to them, respect of differences is the only way unity can be attained, and that individual characteristics need not be lost in a collective – but, rather, complement and enhance the process of creation of a better civilization.

With the encouragement of art education, students not only learn how to manipulate traditional and modern tools and mediums in the art creation process, but also learn to perceive their individual works of art as representations of themselves, and to openly attempt to understand the emotional representations in the work of fellow artists.

Olivia Gude, the 2009 recipient of the prestigious National Art Education Association’s Lowenfeld Lecture Scholarship, spoke about the numerous ways in which art education is instrumental in forming an informed self- and world-aware citizen. She asserts that:

Through art education, students develop enhanced skills for understanding the meaning making of others. Through quality art education, youth develop the capacity to attend to nuances of meaning. Most significantly, engagement with the arts teaches youth to perceive complexity as pleasure and possibility, not as irritating uncertainty. Heightened self-awareness is extended to heightened awareness of others . . .

The vividness of art experiences blurs the boundaries between self experience and the experiences of another. Through artworks, students absorb the perceptions of others— situated in other times and places, embodied in other races, genders, ages, classes, and abilities. Through art, the self becomes vitally interested in other selves, sensing the possibilities and problems of those selves within oneself.

A democracy cannot long function as the tyranny of uncaring majorities over various minorities of interest, nor can it long function when powerful minorities disregard the interests and needs of the majority. Democracy requires that difference be perceived not as an assault on selfhood, but as an invitation to be a fuller, more open self who incorporates the sensations and experiences of others into one’s own perceptions of the world and into one’s contributions to collective decision making.

Art education promotes the very values after which the United States was fashioned, in a way that allows children to understand and practice democracy within their immediate surroundings, as their natural enthusiasm for discovery of self and others prospers.