Nov 20th Session 4B

Presentation 1 :(Re)Telling Stories in Art Museums as a Wartime Service, 1917-1918, Allison Clark

In 1915, several art museums in the United States began to experiment with storytelling programs designed to educate visitors about particular artworks through carefully constructed oral narratives. By 1917—two years after Story Hours were introduced to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York and the same year the United States joined Allied forces in Europe—skilled orator Anna Curtis Chandler had begun to reimagine and expand the Met’s storytelling program. At a time when American values were being tested on the warfront, Chandler dynamically engaged with ethics on the home front through her storytelling program, which she divided into three primary components: Saturday Story Hours for Museum members, Sunday Story Hours for the general public, and participatory Children’s Hours for the youngest learners. Moreover, she broadened her storytelling activities to include written narratives, launching her career as an author with the seminal storybook, Magic Pictures of the Long Ago: Stories of the People of Many Lands, in 1918. Employing this book’s second chapter, titled “Little People from Tanagra; A Story of Greece,” as the main form of evidence used to unpack Chandler’s personal worldview during the United States’ active military involvement in World War I, I argue that Chandler’s prose mirrors American public opinion at this time of international conflict. In short, both Chandler’s work and the country are caught between pacifism and loyalty-fueled aggression, sentiments she capitalized upon in order to involve listeners and readers in narratives’ meaning-making processes.

Presentation 2: Contrasting Views About Teaching Art During the Progressive Era, Joseph Watras, presented by Mary Zahner

In 1928, Harold Rugg and Ann Schumaker of the Lincoln School at Teachers College argued that John Dewey had revolutionized education by creating a laboratory school where children underwent experiences rather than learned things. Rugg and Shumaker wanted activities involving art to help students develop skills in self-expression. They claimed that art resulted from artists translating an inner image into an outward form.

Because they wanted art to serve self-expression, Rugg and Schumaker disagreed with the type of instruction in art that Arthur Wesley Dow had developed. In the 1880s, Dow had developed a method that taught students to apply the principles of composition to a wide variety of art forms through an understanding of line, mass, and color. He did not think the aim of art education was to teach children to create art; he wanted to show students how an understanding of finer form and more harmony in tone and color would enable them to improve their surroundings. His aim was to have art education teach children to appreciate beauty. Dow went on to create a series of exercises that extended from kindergarten to high school that taught them to judge the quality of form, tone, and color of many objects from paintings, to clothes, to teacups.

Not only did Rugg and Schumaker dismiss the humanistic aims that Dow had expressed, they misquoted the ways John Dewey had used art in his laboratory school. For example, Dewey wrote about the innate instincts of children that provided the motive forces for learning. He described how a teacher could build lessons on the child’s natural desire to use pencil and paper; however, he warned that children could not simply express their impulses. In one example, he discussed how a drawing exercise was part of a lesson about the development of improved living conditions in human society. The general discussion was about the ways people lived in caves in preindustrial societies. After making an initial drawing, the child went to look closely at trees. When he returned, he examined his efforts closely, and made corrections. Accordingly, in this lesson, Dewey did not think that art was a method of self-expression; it was part of wider efforts to understand and communicate insights about some investigation, such as about the progress of society. 

In fairness to Rugg and Shumaker, they expressed ideas that were popular during the early years of the twentieth century. Since the ability to express one’s self was an important aspect of democratic living, they believed they were making schools serve democracy. Unfortunately, as several critics of progressive education pointed out, Rugg and Shumaker overlooked the ways that Dewey had shown that the disciplined knowledge available through the subject matters was essential to democratic living. The notion of art education that Dow had proposed fit the definition Dewey offered of an education for democracy despite the criticisms of Rugg and Shumaker.  

Presentation 3: From Alfred Lichtwark to Dewey: An International, Comparative Analysis, Martina Riedler

Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914) was a remarkable German art historian, museum visionary, pedagogical reformer, and art educator in Hamburg. This study provides a particular focus on the work and standpoints of Lichtwark, and his leading influence on the art education movement (Kunsterzieherbewegung) in Germany. Using the educational programs he developed in his life-time role as director of the Kunsthalle Hamburg as a starting point, I looked at working-class educational and aesthetic movements concurrent with the artistic struggles in Hamburg. Lichtwark wanted to change the museum from an imitation of aristocratic institutions to a force by which to educate and lead the public. In order to impose his vision on the museum, he built up firm support among patrons and artists, even institutionalizing a new organization for amateurs. He built on the notion to cultivate appreciation and production of art and crafts by learning the techniques of production directly. Lichtwark saw children's art education as critical in this endeavor. His ideas resounded through art schools and museums, resulting in exhibitions appealing to children and non-art specialists.

Focusing on Fin-de-Siècle Germany, this study was initially framed by a geographic location and the historical period of the turn of the twentieth century, when Imperial Germany shifted toward aesthetic modernism. Describing Lichtwark’s accomplishments and his impact on the reform pedagogy movement (the German equivalent to progressive education in the US), I employed a biographical research method at the first stage of data collection. After a comparative textual analysis, themes of child-centered education, controversies over contemporary art, critical relationship between culture and citizenship, working class, education beyond schools emerged and led to a more dynamic framework through which to interpret Lichwark’s story of German art education. Moving beyond the local underlying patterns and structures, I grounded Lichtwark’s philosophy of art, education and society in an international context, and investigated contradictions and similarities to John Dewey’s concepts of art and education.

This study is for a large part informed by a critical review of original writings of Lichtwark and some of his contemporaries from the time and place of study. Secondary and more recent sources were studied for analyzing various, partly contradictory perceptions of Lichtwark’s significance on both, local and international levels. I searched the library of the University of Hamburg as well as other local archives, such as the Kunsthalle for relevant books, journals, and original documents representing and/ or reviewing Lichtwark’s work.

Furthermore, this study is timely and unique for several reasons. Both, Lichtwark and Dewey were leading representatives of the progressive movement in their era and location. However, a literature review revealed that no substantial comparison has been conducted so far. The findings of this international, comparative study revealed the complexity and challenges of analyzing the development of progressive education and reform pedagogy in regard to art education over time.