Nov 19th Session 1B

Presentation 1: Art of the Incarcerated: Artmaking in the Japanese American Internment Camps, Gina L. Mumma Wenger

Objects often give us a tangible connection to the past and help history come alive. They evoke a tactile connection to the lives of others and assist in creating a memory. The physicality of a “thing” is a bridge to the past. It is tangible evidence of the person’s life and experience that endures. Connecting a historical object, such as an artwork made as a child to the surviving artist, brings forth a connection to history unlike any other.

This paper is reflects an inventory of artwork and art education ephemera created by the K-12 grade school children incarcerated in the Japanese American Internment Camps during WWII. The collection primarily contains portrait, landscapes, and still life drawings, but there are also a large number of “poster contests,” tempera paintings, vocational skill building for assignments for printmaking, fashion design, textile manufacturing, as well as woodworking. In addition, photographic examples of a now destroyed community mural that included up to 7 panels were recovered with the students standing next to the works.

The methodology combines interviews with internees, former WRA employees, collection of catalogue materials from multiple collections, and cross-analysis documentation.  The presentation will include examples from the Jamie Vogel collection in the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, the Hirasaki Resources Center at the Japanese American National Museum, multiple community museum collections, WRA administrative documents, images of children’s art works from private individuals, and interviews with surviving internees and WRA employed art educators. Tracing the existing methods, materials, assignments and curricular notes of by art educators in the WWII Japanese American Internment Camps expands the dialogue surrounding the role and purpose of art education.

Presentation 2 : The Process Continues: Staff Exhibitions and the Art Education Archive, Sharon Bainbridge, Janine Sykes

This paper considers the relevance of the art education archive and staff exhibitions to contemporary art education practice. Theoretical aspects include the archive as a framework for research, Basic Design thinking, and curatorial discourse. The methodology is predominantly object-based, taking the form of archival and exhibition material, whilst maintaining a contextualist approach. Sources include objects from the (UK) National Art Education Archive (NAEA) such as a discussion paper by Tom Hudson for the International Society for Education through Art (INSEA) Congress (1970), and artwork from two staff exhibitions at Leeds College of Art (LCA): Behind the Glass Mosaic 1913 2013 and The Process Continues (2015). Key texts include The Incomplete Circle (Lewis, 2000) and Debates in Art and Design Education (Addison & Burgess, 2013).

The Process Continues exhibition contextualised staff work in the stories of two influential art educationalists who developed and transgressed Basic Design thinking: Eric Atkinson and Tom Hudson. Smith (2012) encourages curators to reference other exhibitions so contributing to curatorial discourse. Behind the Glass Mosaic 1913 2013 references the exhibition and publication Behind the Mosaic (2003) as did The Process Continues (2015), which also echoed The Developing Process (1959) and The Continuing Process (1981), both of which documented Basic Design thinking.

Hudson and Atkinson both taught on the Basic Design Course at LCA, a programme now considered to be the most innovative post-Bauhaus art education programme in Europe (Lewis, 2000).  Both practiced Basic Design thinking in institutions nationally and internationally in Canada, and Hudson also took the approach to Brazil. Their departure from the UK coincided with the 1970 National Advisory Council on Art Education (NACAE) report, which rejected fine art studies as central to creative disciplines and the replacement of person-centred pedagogy with more quantifiable approaches, marking the subsuming of art schools by higher education.

In Hudson’s 1969 address to the World Congress of Art Education in New York, fifteen student- staff exhibitions are documented, between 1955 and 1970, including The Developing Process, London (1959) and The Visual Adventure, New York (1964). The purposes of these exhibitions are reconsidered alongside another interest explored in The Process Continues exhibition i.e. the importance of archives to creative practice and teaching. Exhibits discussed include Tom Went to Brazil (2014), a film by Mark Hudson (T. Hudson’s son) who used a little-known aspect of the NAEA collection: Hudson’s work in Brazil 1971-73. The film reveals previously unseen scenes of art education in a colourful, performance-based practice that went beyond Basic Design, at a time when Brazil was ruled by a repressive military dictatorship. Likewise, Atkinson’s work progressed, unrestricted, taking the principles of Basic Design into the disciplines of advertising and media.

In contrast to current global systems of quality standards, such as curriculum coherence (UK) and the Asian-based model of curriculum control Jagodzinsky (2014), it is proposed that the use of art education archives and the staff collective be reconsidered as practices that sustain art education discourse and practice.