When I started out as an educator nearly twenty years ago, I had an unfounded but steadfast aversion to contemporary art. Informed only by my college art history lectures, which made little mention of anything outside the Western European canon, I though the “masters” were all that mattered. Because knowing my students has always been my starting point for developing lessons in which they see themselves and readily engage, even I couldn’t sustain this narrow view of art. In an effort to let go of past practices of teaching with overused and outdated works, I looked to contemporary art for a broader path to what I now know to be a rich, expressive, and diverse representation of my students.
A second-grade student uses Warholʼs Factory method to create a series of self-portraits.
In contemporary art we can find benefits to reinforce core concepts, apply technology as a tool with integrity, and define and share student voice.
Beyond the Masters
In the past, I avoided teaching contemporary art because I didn’t think I knew enough about it and wouldn’t get it right. Now that I have been teaching for two decades, I have learned to identify unacceptable practices, move beyond them in favor of my “kids first” philosophy, and admit that I can’t teach only what I know and like. I wasn’t being true to myself, the ethics of teaching, or my tech-obsessed five-year-olds. I began to venture beyond the masters and artists with household names with whom they were all familiar.
Why I Choose Contemporary Art
Contemporary art strengthens my long-standing connection to core disciplines by reinforcing literacy, supplementing my lessons with picture books and written artist statements, exploring the science of color and nature, and illustrating the past and present.
Art therapy has reinvented itself as social-emotional learning (SEL), and the profound and deeply embedded throughlines of culturally responsive learning (CRL) also characterize contemporary art. Here we find the diversity that the discipline and our children deserve: artists from every corner of the world, representing every culture, race, language, gender, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability, and family and home configuration. Art is instantly elevated as a pedagogical clearinghouse for student comprehension—a one-stop approach that is inclusive and accessible in its open-endedness and relatability. It is the embodiment of celebrating, communicating, and sharing all of the cultural facets that make up every person in the world.
Connecting through Technology
Contemporary art is the counternarrative to “dominant culture” idealization. It offers a broader bandwidth, greater representation, and is more grounded in a reality-based range of perspective, expression, and thought. My digital native students find connections to living artists through their life stories and work, reinforcing their humanity through digital media, video interviews, virtual reality exhibits, artists’ websites, and social media.
Expanding Social Awareness
Students develop their own self-awareness while also expanding their social awareness of cultural aspects that differ from their own. Contemporary artists provide meaningful opportunities for them to see, think, and wonder about diverse works without my instructional commentary. Through this process, biases, misperceptions, and deficit-based stereotypes surface, helping me to understand and redirect students’ thinking. In this space, I applied Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s five pursuits and protocols to unpack student responses and expand vital conversations. Exploring the curriculum and standards through a contemporary lens invites collaboration between other frameworks too.
More Than Just Art
When students explore the art of artists who live and work in a world familiar to them, they learn about more than just art. Contemporary artists are more likely to support worldwide causes and movements. They leverage their position to support the environment, sustainability, and clean water by sharing visual commentaries that would be inaccessible without technology.
Accessible for All
Contemporary art offers real stories, real people’s voices, and sometimes even viewer participation, making it accessible and lifting the veil of mystery that made art something to admire rather than something to engage in. This accessibility is available to my English language learners as well, offering them a way to communicate and represent themselves. Developing lessons based in these intersections reinforces contemporary art as a universal understanding of a formerly elitist reality. Changing the narrative, while keeping students at the forefront, has opened the door to relating students to learning through contemporary art.
Kimberly Olson is an art teacher at Centre School in Hampton, New Hampshire. KOlson@Sau90.org
This issue focuses on various interpretations of contemporary art and what art means for students today. Young students investigate their connection to the natural world and print with leaves, elementary students combine elements from historical and contemporary artworks to create a new work of art, middle-school students explore the large-scale sculptures of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, high-school students channel contemporary themes into a self-portrait photo composite, and more.
