Arts Education: From Challenges to Triumphs!

Arts Education: From Challenges to Triumphs!

View the May 31 recording here

Download the accompanying handout here

Triumphs often come about by overcoming challenges, and we usually learn a lot along the way. Join us for this candid and interactive conversation exploring the ups, downs, and in-betweens that have shaped us as visual arts, design, and media arts educators. When you register, feel free to share your questions to help guide the conversation.

2022 is the year of NAEA’s 75th anniversary! In honor of this milestone, our Town Hall series this year will continue to tackle fresh content that is relevant to visual arts, design, and media arts educators while looking back at NAEA’s history and ahead to our future. Each conversation will reflect on lessons learned and discoveries made through an honest dialogue that acknowledges challenges, accomplishments, and growth.

Complete information on all NAEA Town Hall Conversations is available here.

Panelists

Paula Liz
Art Educator
Montgomery County Schools
She/Her/Hers

Born in Puerto Rico and raised near Baltimore, Paula Liz attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she received her BFA in painting and MAT in art education. She has more than a decade of teaching experience at public, independent, and charter schools in New York; Texas; Washington, DC; and Maryland. Paula Liz is bilingual and currently teaches elementary art at a two-way immersion school. Outside of the classroom, Paula is the founder and executive director of Anti-Racist Art Teachers; a member of the National Art Education Association Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Commission; and an initial cohort member of the Maryland State Department of Education’s Anti-Racist Educators in the Arts Learning Lab (A-REALL).

gloria j. wilson
Founding Codirector, Racial Justice Studio
Associate Professor, Art + Visual Culture Education
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
She/Her/Hers

gloria j. wilson is the founding codirector of Racial Justice Studio, coeditor of the newly released book A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back, and associate professor of art + visual culture education at the University of Arizona. gloria is recognized for her work in K–20 art education and as a facilitator for antiracism workshops in art museums and community spaces utilizing arts-based practices. Her work broadly examines notions of power, access, and representation across arts modalities and specifically examines the intersections of racialized/gendered identity and arts participation.

gloria has been an invited artist/speaker for the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art BLACK BOX series, and she actively participates as a steering committee member for the Coalition on Racial Equity in the Arts + Education (crea+e), a national collective of artists, educators, activists, and thought leaders of color who advocate, teach, research, and publish on issues related to racial equity in the arts and education. In the field of art education, she is Chair of the National Art Education Association’s (NAEA) Committee on Multiethnic Concerns (COMC) and associate editor of the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, and she was the 2020 recipient of the Mary J. Rouse Award.

Ellen Winner
Professor Emerita, Boston College
Senior Research Associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Boston, MA
She/Her/Hers

Ellen Winner is professor emerita of psychology at Boston College and senior research associate at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research has focused on the psychology of the arts and art education. Her most recent books are How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration (Oxford University Press, 2018), An Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse: Art Education From Colonial Times to a Promising Future (Oxford University Press, 2022), and The Child as Visual Artist (Cambridge University Press, 2022). In An Uneasy Guest, Ellen tells the story of how art education has been conceptualized, taught, and advocated for in the United States in the face of its persistent marginalization in the education system. She discusses the pendulum swings between traditional and progressive art education and traces various rationales offered for art education from the 19th century onward. Ellen argues that art education has all too often failed to be justified as a good in and of itself—and this failure has affected both the status of visual arts education in our schools and the quality of its teaching.