From Drawing to Visual Culture: A History of Art Education in Canada

by Harold Pearse

Overview

From Drawing to Visual Culture takes a sweeping view of the role of visual art in Canadian education, from its roots as industrial drawing in the early nineteenth century to its important but often ambiguous position in contemporary schools. Art education and cultural history scholars consider practices in public schools, post-secondary schools, and non-school settings. The essays, many illustrated, range from focused surveys of particular eras or regions, to theoretically based analyses of movements or trends, to case studies that examine art education theory and practice in specific times and places. Contributors show that the nature and character of art education in Canada reflects the influence of ideas and practices in art and education and their interaction with various aspects of culture, language, religion, government, and geography. Contributors include F. Graeme Chalmers (British Columbia), Roger Clark (Western Ontario), Robert Dalton (Victoria), Suzanne Lemerise (Quebec à Montreal), E. Lisa Panayotidis (Calgary), Leah Sherman (Concordia), J. Craig Stirling (independent scholar and researcher, Montreal), Wendy Stephenson (PhD candidate, British Columbia), William Zuk (Manitoba).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780773560215
Publisher:	McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	12/14/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Harold Pearse was formerly on the faculty of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and is currently an adjunct professor, education, and sessional instructor, elementary education and art and design, University of Alberta.

Editorial Reviews

This book addresses many of the untold histories of art education in Canada. Perhaps most significantly these essays do not focus solely on schools but look at many other sites in culture where notions of drawing and art are taught and learned over a lifetime. Together they constitute a survey of some of the major trajectories of research within the history of art education.” Cheryl Meszaros, public programs, Vancouver Art Gallery

“… a collection of essays that effectively lay the groundwork for a history of art education in Canada … interweaving a complex rhizomatic narrative of intertwining details and names that provide a rich tapestry of connections and details that only someone with over thirty years of experience and knowledge of the Canadian art context could have done. With this background it becomes possible to see [for example] how the Arts and Crafts Movement and the cultivation of art for moral and democratic citizenship could be used for ideological ends.” University of Toronto Quarterly

“This book will appeal principally to Canadian art educators but there is much here for those elsewhere, partly in the form of that ‘home news from abroad’ which offers, albeit analogously as well as historically, insights into one’s own condition and partly because the accounts here are of substantial intrinsic worth and quality. The ten chapters provide a vivid picture of the evolution of art education in Canada from the nineteenth century to the present. Given that Canadian art education is the sum of disparate parts, this book is an interesting, worthwhile and serious attempt to grasp the genesis of the whole.” International Journal of Art & Design Education

From the Publisher