Research, Theory & Practice / Annotated Bibliography:
General | Collecting Unit | Historical & Cultural Context | Critical Response

The following list is a small selection of useful essays and texts that were used to develop the units and lessons on this site. We hope these texts will enrich your teaching practice. This is a growing list so check back with us frequently and we welcome any suggestions for additional resources.

Based on the premise that contemporary arts education should prepare students for personal fulfillment and enable them to constructively contribute to society; Freedman and Stuhr contend that a 21 st century arts curriculum must focus on newly emergent issues, problems and possibilities that go beyond discipline based curriculums and standardized assessment. Using visual culture to connect makers to viewers, the authors believe that art classrooms should be conceptualized as multitasking arenas where images and objects lead students and teachers through the investigation of popular culture, contemporary ideas, issues, opinions, and conflicts.

This article addresses the assumptions people make when viewing works of art and the pattern of reasoning they undertake when judging a work of art. The author surveys pictorial judgments made by diverse audiences of varying age groups and contends that innovations in art put a strain on the everyday aesthetic reasoning of the general public. As a result, arts educators must understand the assumptions that people bring to the art viewing experience and be prepared to challenge their habitual way of seeking meaning in art.

Michael Parsons argues that high-quality integrated curriculum targets important social problems transcend the limits of individual disciplines and includes topics that are ambiguous and need to be understood from several points of view. Drawing from educational theorists like Dewey, Lowenfeld, and Gardner, the author analyzes curriculum from a social, psychological and epistemological perspective and provides concrete examples of specific integration projects. In doing so, he cites developments in the contemporary art world that lie behind these examples and enable art to become central to the integrated curriculum.

This book explores the many roles that successful arts integration programs have played in improving education for students in schools and communities. Beginning with the 1980’s reformers in Chicago who argued that students were not developing higher order thinking skills such as; the ability to problem solve, think creatively, communicate clearly and work in teams, the authors construct a powerful argument for placing the arts at the center of education reform. Drawing on current reports and studies, the authors separate arts integration from conventional arts education and examine its pedagogical strategy, educational benefits, and the challenges of making it readily available in schools and after school programs. This book offers practical strategies for educators, policymakers, school reformers, and parents who want to use the emotional, social, and sensory dimensions of the arts to engage students and promote development and learning across the curriculum.

Smith examines issues related to the philosophy and practice of aesthetic education as it relates to present day challenges and policymaking in arts education. The author provides multiple definitions and concepts of “aesthetic education” through the lens of three generative thinkers (Schiller, Read, and Dewey) and various contemporary theorists. Recent developments and contemporary movements toward aesthetic education are discussed as well as questions and issues for further consideration on the meaning and nature of aesthetic education.

The author challenges misconceptions about the intellectual status of learning in the visual arts through his exploration of the theoretical constructs of artistic practice. Arguing that the artist has the potential to change the way we see and think, Sullivan views the studio experience as a form of cognitive inquiry and a site where qualitative research can be undertaken. By questioning the role imagination and intellect plays in constructing knowledge, he validates art practice as a legitimate form of research that raises profound questions and yields grounded outcomes.

This is an expanded edition of a resource that addresses what teachers and schools can do within their curriculum, classroom, and teaching methods to help students learn more effectively. The authors draw on new research and findings from many branches of science to explore how to better link the science of learning to actual classroom practices. This book examines these findings and their implications for what is taught, how it is taught, and how student learning is assessed. Included in this text are exemplary teaching examples and illustrations of how research on learning and transfer has uncovered important principles for structuring learning experiences that enable students to use what they have learned in new settings.

Intended for school teachers interested in providing a qualitative art program at the Elementary and Middle School level, this text offers educational psychology and child development as well as lesson plans, practical classroom suggestions and full color illustrations throughout. The first section of this text focuses on the role of the arts in society and the schools, the fundamentals of design, teaching strategies, and the intrinsic worth of the art studio experience as motivation in the arts. The next section addresses children’s learning and creative development, ways to integrate the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains in order to teach higher level thinking skills, and how to motivate students to learn by integrating art with other content areas like science and math. The last section offers new teaching approaches to art appreciation, history, criticism and aesthetics as well as objectives and evaluation criteria for assessing learning in the arts.

This book documents New York installation artist Fred Wilson’s "mining” of the Maryland Historical Society's collection to create a thought-provoking exhibition that elicits emotional responses from historic artifacts and documents. Through Wilson’s surprising juxtapositions recreated in this catalogue, he provides a more intimate personal connection to the past. Amongst these images are rearranged and labeled marble portrait busts, reward posters for runaway slaves, and cigar-store Indians with backs turned to the viewer. This highly challenging album argues for a more open, inclusive relationship between cultural institutions and the communities they serve, as well as heightens the awareness of the role museums play in presenting and interpreting cultural heritages.

In this book, Professor Colin Renfrew argues that archaeologists can learn a great deal about interpreting and understanding the past through the approaches taken by modern day artists. He investigates the ways in which contemporary artists and archaeologists seek to understand the world through their unique individual practices. By examining art as archaeology and archaeology as art, he offers the reader fresh opportunities to analyze and understand the human condition. Various examples of archaeological sites are juxtaposed with modern art and sculpture made by leading contemporary artists, including Richard Long, Mark Dion, Antony Gormley, Eduardo Paolozzi, and David Mach, whose works are noted for their engagements with their physical surroundings.

This catalogue documents the artistic practice of collecting and saving as a means of artistic expression through a multitude of artworks: paintings, sculptures, books, photographs, computers, projections, ready-mades and installations. The catalogue serves as a reproduction and installation view of Martin Kippenberger's exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. By using the work of 40 different internationally celebrated artists, the authors provide surprising insight into the process of creating art. In many respects, this catalogue is organized like a storage file of information, categorizing the artistic contributions and essays and texts by 25 different authors alphabetically.

Sontag thoughtfully and rigorously examines visual depictions of war throughout history with a concentration on photography. She analyzes the veracity of war imagery from gender and cultural perspectives and attempts to differentiate between factual and fictional imagery. Citing Civil and Vietnam War photography, the paintings of Goya, and the contemporary work of Jeff Wall among others, Sontag acknowledges the malleability of war imagery and its ability transform public opinion. Images of war simultaneously detail very specific events yet remain vague as indicators of broader cultural context. Ultimately, Sontag decides that despite the overwhelming power of the photographic image it does not reveal much of anything, or at least nothing approaching empathy, for the privileged spectator.

The authors of this article begin by questioning how emotion influences memory. Specifically, they divide memories into three categories: eyewitness, flashbulb, and traumatic experiences. All three are treated to the same inquiries. First, does emotion enhance or diminish the capacity to remember? Second, whether or not special mechanisms are necessary to account for emotion’s effect on memory? Through a mixture of psychological theory and scientific observation the authors state that emotion can affect memory, both positively and negatively. Unfortunately, the specific effects are considerably harder to determine. The final assessment posits that the neurological processes involved in memory recollection are too complex and varied to reduce to a simple conclusion.

This article addresses Michael H. Frisch’s perceived disconnect between history and memory in the United States. He sees two seemingly disparate streams of thought, encompassing both sides of the political spectrum, contributing to this problem: selective amnesia and artificial distancing. The former is exemplified by a student’s inability to recall basic facts about the Vietnam War, despite growing up while the war occurred. The latter is characterized by an interview with a former CIA officer who attempts to consign the atrocities of Vietnam to another era very different from today’s reality. Regardless, both approaches are inadequate at engaging with the process of remembering and recognizing history’s influence on current events. He cites works by oral historian Studs Terkel and documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls as successfully establishing a connection between past and present events, which offer interpretive accounts of peoples’ remembrances. Works like theirs, he claims, reject the commodification of public memory and begin to reveal what it truly means to remember.

Sandage posits that the Civil Rights movement strategically utilized the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, and Lincoln’s ambiguous legacy as the Great Emancipator in the eyes of black leaders, to achieve widespread legitimacy in America. He focuses on two seminal events at the Memorial that bookend a significant chapter in blacks’ struggle for equality. First was a 1939 performance of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” by black singer Marian Anderson in front of an integrated audience of 75,000 at the memorial. This performance was the first civil rights event favorably received by the white American establishment to “earn a positive place in the American public memory,” (136). Second, the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech serves as the apotheosis of the Lincoln Memorial’s role in American Civil Rights and begins King’s role as the primary figure in the Civil Rights movement. Sandage expertly illustrates how black Americans understood and adopted “the icon called Abraham Lincoln” and the Memorial’s central location in the nation’s capitol to positively align themselves with Lincoln’s increasingly legendary status in the public memory.

In his introduction to the book History and Memory editor David Thelen discusses how memory has become an essential tool in historical scholarship but its nature is not wholly understood. Thelen elaborates by introducing two “starting points” for the study of memory and history. One is that memories are constructed, not reproduced or merely recollected. The other is that the construction of memory does not occur in isolation but through interactions with others including family and community members. More scholarship is needed to investigate the nature of memory since not enough, in his opinion, has been written on what it means to remember. Within this context, he introduces the topics and authors of the collected essays in History and Memory, which seek to remedy part of this perceived problem. The book includes analyses of oral histories related to Watergate, the John Brown Harper’s Ferry incident, and Studebaker employees. Also included are essays on the structures of American collective memory and remembrances of the Civil War related to Frederick Douglass.

This text is written primarily for educators to assist them in understanding brain functioning and to provide examples of how to match teaching practices to how the brain encodes, manipulates, and stores information. The author explores why meaning is essential for attention, how emotion can enhance or impede learning, and how various types of rehearsal are necessary for different types of learning. Included are ways to use the visual and auditory senses to enhance learning in all grades and subjects as well as classroom-proven examples of simulations, projects, and problems that make curriculum more meaningful.

The purpose of this book is to improve student’s critical thinking skills through models and suggestions that facilitate and improve student dialogues about art. This book offers s amples of critical discussions and presents both successful as well as unsuccessful critiquing strategies in a multitude of educational settings. Sample critiques likewise provide real classroom perspectives on dealing with meaning, gender issues, influences and more. Judging student art is also addressed, while general recommendations for interactive group critiques round out this guide for practicing teachers.

Through a wide sampling of critical publications from present-day critics writing about contemporary American art, this supplementary text helps students to better understand contemporary art by engaging them in the study of aesthetics and criticism. The author organizes this book around core critical responses such as: describing, interpreting, judging, and theorizing, which provide both teachers and students with an effective framework for viewing and discussing contemporary art and writing their own critical responses.

This book transforms current worldwide research and theory on evaluation and assessment in the arts into concrete classroom strategies. The author provides a thorough explanation of key concepts and vocabulary relating to assessment as well as many examples of how assessment can be directly integrated with instruction. Performance assessment strategies are detailed and evaluated, and include ideas for improving the strength of the art portfolio as well as approaches that encourage meaningful student responses in art journals. Traditional methods and strategies like scoring and judging, and formative and summative assessment styles are also explored in this comprehensive examination that provides the information teachers need to make informed decisions about student assessment in the classroom.

Smith examines issues related to the philosophy and practice of aesthetic education as it relates to present day challenges and policymaking in arts education. The author provides multiple definitions and concepts of “aesthetic education” through the lens of three generative thinkers (Schiller, Read, and Dewey) and various contemporary theorists. Recent developments and contemporary movements toward aesthetic education are discussed as well as questions and issues for further consideration on the meaning and nature of aesthetic education.