Teaching a Wide Range of Artists

  When teaching culturally responsively, it is important to use activities that are also culturally responsive. As an art teacher I can do this in many ways. One example is to include lesson plans based on a range of artists that different students can identify with. In my career as an art student, I often noticed that the art history cannon we studied in my classes was very unrepresentative of anyone other than white men. We rarely studied women artists, bipoc artists, and barely even brushed up on eastern culture. This made it clear to me that the curriculum that the university and most all of the art history in my surveys that I took were biased, and not culturally responsive at all. As an art teacher, I do not want this to be the case in my classroom. I don't want a student to be deterred from art because they don't know any artists with similar customs and cultures to them. Art is a way people represent themselves and teach each other about their lives.

    There is a group of women artists called the Guerilla Girls, who fought for women's representation in art institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. One of their posters that I think is relevant to being culturally responsive is called "DO WOMEN STILL HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM?" 1989. Below is a picture of the poster. I think the Guerilla Girls respond to the culture of the art world in a very astounding way. They realized that the only way women were really represented in the Met was in nude paintings that men made. They wanted the institution to recognize and celebrate women artists. So they fought for them and started making important changes in the art world. As a female artist, I am greatly moved by their work and dedication to the feminist cause.

    Another artist who is great for teaching a culturally responsive curriculum is Nick Cave. This artist creates sound suits that he makes out of a variety of materials. Using these sound suits, he represents different items of his upbringing and culture, starting with making them from his hand-me-down clothes to using items associated with Mardi Gras, drag, and shamanistic rituals. Cave states that " upon hearing the sound of the first suit, he “…started to think about the role of protest. In order to be heard, you have to speak louder" (National Gallery of Canada, 2022). I have seen his work in the Denver Museum of art back in 2012, and was astounded by his art. It made me think about not only who Cave was and his culture and upbringing, but who I was and what I valued in my life as well. Nick Cave teaches to be loud about your history and the things that are important to you, making him great for teaching culturally responsive lessons.

    Another Important activity for my art classroom that I would like to incorporate is not only teaching a wide range of different artists but to bring in a wide range of local and international artists for artist talks and interactive lessons with the students. This will not only have them study the artist and their culture and history but actually get to experience them in person. Artists in this situation will even be given the opportunity to work and teach the students based off of their own practices.