Negated Identities in Dominican Art Education

Drawing from decolonial theories, I explore the history of art education in the Dominican Republic in the first half of the 20th century. I examine how racial hierarchies were activated in art classes in school through the romanticization of the countryside and the mystification of children’s material culture. A distorted use of rural imagery served to advance the elite’s narrative of White Dominican identity and to normalize a racial imaginary that negated the country’s African heritage. I analyze how national and global discourses that coupled modernity with Whiteness encouraged aesthetic preferences that permeated children’s visual culture and national art. I contend that, because children’s art and play conjure images of innocence, the exhibition of children’s material culture was utilized to naturalize the absence of a Black heritage. This article builds on recent scholarship that underscores the need to diversify art education histories.