Flying Under the Radar: Navigating Through Frustrations, Tears, and the Politics of the Liberal Arts Curriculum

The elements and principles of art continue to highly influence curriculum in the typical art foundations class. The reduction of art and artmaking to their formal properties constricts a student’s ability to engage in real-life artist processes, and many important contextual meanings are lost. Consequently, art foundations curriculum derived from the elements and principles of art narrows the lens through which we create, teach, and talk about art. In my own experience as an art teacher, I have found that this approach limits my teaching and makes it difficult to fully and authentically understand the works of other artists and create lesson plans that are diverse and representative of a wide range of people and experiences. This thesis explores my evolving experiences with reinventing art foundations, primarily through revising the artistic canon within a secondary art classroom.