Contemporary Issues in Art Education

Conference Postcard

The 84th Annual Art Education Conference will focus on contemporary issues in art education by offering a range of perspectives and approaches to creative expression in response to art, society and culture. 

What are contemporary issues in art education? How do artists address contemporary social issues through artmaking, and how can art teachers address contemporary issues relevant to students in the PK-12 art curriculum? 

Mark your calendars and plan to join us on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023 for an exciting day filled with studio workshops, visual presentations, and creative ideas to explore contemporary issues and art.

Keynote Speakers: 
Flávia Bastos
Flavia Bastos

Can Art Education Promote Civic Engagement? The Experience of the Who is American Today?

Reflecting upon the continuous assaults to democracy and its institutions experienced recently, this presentation invites reflection and dialogue about:

  • What is our responsibility as art educators to sustain democracy through meaningful engagement and critical activity?
  • How can artists and creative citizens model an ethics of care that promotes desire to contribute to society?

Findings from the ongoing research project Who is American Today? will ground ideas, concepts, and pedagogical approaches that promote students’ agency and civic engagement. Connecting personal and political spheres, the project highlights the potential role of digital media and digital making in contemporary art education practices and invites art educators to actively engage with their students in the advancement of the common good.

  • About Flávia Bastos

    Flávia Bastos, Ph.D. is a University of Cincinnati Distinguished Research Professor in the Arts and Humanities. Her research is inspired by the educational philosophy of educator Paulo Freire. Flávia is a Distinguished Fellow of the National Art Education Association, past chairperson for the Council of Policy Studies in Art Education, and former Director of the Higher Education Division of the National Art Education Association. Her current project Who is American Today? received the Excellence in Research in Education through Art, International Society for Education through Art in 2021. She received the 2009 Ziegfeld Award of the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) and the Mary J. House Award of the National Art Education Association Women’s Caucus in 2007. She is past senior editor of the Journal of Art Education and has published and lectured extensively in the United States and abroad.

    At UC Professor Bastos has directed the Graduate Program in Art Education for many years, helped establish the Latino Faculty Association, and served as Executive Director of the Emeriti Association. She joins the Graduate College leadership team in the role of Interim Associate Dean.

     www.flaviabastos.com

JORGE LUCERO
Jorge Lucero

Learn about Conceptual Art & Teaching, an ongoing project that is simultaneously a hub, archive, and artwork at the increasingly active intersection where conceptual art and teaching practices meet. Stemming from the art and scholarship of artist and professor Jorge Lucero, CA&T tests the pliability of teaching as a conceptual art practice and the emergence of the teacher as a conceptual artist.

Stacy Levy
Stacy Levy

 "Nature is my Client"

Stacy Levy collaborates with forces such as wind and tides and rain to register changes in our natural environment. 

She has been making working artworks to help solve site issues such as storm water runoff and non point source pollution. Her lecture will explore her collaborations with urban nature, and projects that meld art, engineering and ecology. 

  • About Stacy Levy (LEAVE-vee)

    Stacy’s work with rain, urban tides, and aquatic food webs gives new understanding to the life of water on sites ranging from nature centers to parking lots. Some of her works highlight the unseen life forms inhabiting local water, while other projects create a home for the rain on the site.  From puddles to watersheds. Stacy's work builds the bridge between art and science, as she collaborates with experts in many fields ranging from engineering to zoology.

    Stacy has worked with urban tides in the East River and the Hudson, as well as the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.  She is currently working on a project in the  new East Midtown Greenway in New York City  to magnify the forms of common diatoms living in the East River.

    A graduate of Yale University, Stacy also received her MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and attended the Architectural Association in London. She began her work as an urban forester in the Mid Atlantic region and has been working as an eco-revelatory artist in the public realm for 29 years. Stacy has been awarded the Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award and the Penn Future Award for Women in Conservation.

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter
Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter

Ain’t I A Woman?

  • About Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter

    Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter is an award-winning Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist, activist and educator who creates socially conscious music, film, and visual art through an autobiographical lens. Although it has been a decade since her release from a Pennsylvania prison, Mary’s time spent on the inside continues to shape the direction of her art and practice. Her entertaining but poignant works offer a critical perspective on the particular challenges women of color face when they become immersed in the criminal justice system.

    Her work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA PS1, African American Museum of Philadelphia, Frieze LA, Eastern State Penitentiary, Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Waterbury Vermont, Martos Gallery, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and Brown University fall 2022.

    Ms. Baxter is a 2017 Right of Return Fellow, 2018- 2019 Mural Arts Philadelphia Reimagining Reentry Fellow, 2019 Leeway Foundation Transformation Awardee, 2021 Ed Trust Justice Fellow, 2021 SheaMoisture and GOOD MIRRORS Emerging Visionary grantee, 2021 Frieze Impact Prize award winner, 2022 S.O.U.R.C.E studio Corrina Mehiel Fellow, 2022 Art 4 Justice grantee partner and 2022 Pratt Forward Fellow. 

Presenters:
Angela M. LaPorte, Ph.D.
Angela LaPorte

Inverse Inclusion as a Pedagogical Model to Preservice Teacher Education 

Inverse inclusion will be introduced as a contemporary pedagogical model for preservice teacher education. The approach will be defined with implications for breaking down learning hierarchies and transforming teachers’ biased perceptions of students’ abilities and stereotypes. Curriculum examples and qualitative research will be shared from a service learning course with university students and adults with cognitive, developmental, and/or physical disabilities. 

  • Angela M. LaPorte, Ph.D.

    Angela M. La Porte is the Director of Art Education at the University of Arkansas. She is Arkansas’ Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Liaison and recently co-authored Art for Life’s Sake: The Case for Arts Education as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Arts in Education. Angela is a National Art Education Association Distinguished Fellow and served as president of the United States Society for Education Through Art, chair of the National Art Education Association’s Lifelong Learning interest group, and Associate Editor for the International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education. She edited the book, Community Connections: Intergenerational Links in Art Education, and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is a Kenneth Marantz Fellow and recipient of the Pearl Greenberg and National Ziegfeld awards. Angela received the Arkansas Art Educator of the Year and Higher Education’s Art Educator of the Year. As an art educator of K-12 and across the lifespan, she is interested in further developing and studying an approach to service learning, inverse inclusion, to better understand how positive art education relationships across differences can begin to reduce stereotypes that emerge through the segregation of people and communities.