Beyond Interpretation: Responding Critically to Public Art

• In Event: Transforming City Schools Through Art: Approaches to Meaningful K-12 Learning

Abstract

Access to public art in cities is an asset for students in urban schools. Argiro (2004) and Russell (2004) both urge art educators to take advantage of public art as original artwork for students to experience in person. Public art provides an opportunity to study local history and practice interpretation. Further, critical research into local public art can provide urban students with an opportunity to agree or disagree with the ways public art in their community portrays local identity. We propose a curriculum framework, the critical response cycle, based on a study of local public art that goes beyond interpretation by engaging students in understanding, reclaiming, and adding new meanings to existing public sculpture. By using public art as a central focus for studying a city, students can develop tools to reclaim and rewrite meanings embedded in public artworks they regularly encounter.
The critical response cycle utilizes aspects of participatory action research, asset-based community development, and urban critical pedagogy and functions as a flexible framework to study public art in various cities.
Participatory Action Research is a methodology frequently utilized by educators working from a critical theory perspective involved in purposive change-oriented work (Haney & Lykes, 2010). In a PAR study, the researcher is an active member of the group, not an objective observer. Rather than conducting research on subjects, a researcher conducts the study with participants. In this way, the authoritative outsider role of the researcher is exchanged for a mode of research recognizes multiple perspectives and values participants’ voices.
Asset-based community development is a strategy of neighborhood revitalization that utilizes a community’s existing assets rather than supplying outside services to remedy perceived needs (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). Kretzmann and McKnight urge all assets be considered including individual talents of community members, community associations, local institutions, and physical resources of the geographical location. In ABCD, community members are the primary actors in all phases of development projects and work toward building their own community, not perceiving themselves as recipients of outside assistance.
Much talk about urban education focuses on deficiencies and challenges. This negative focus may be one factor holding urban schools back. Because urban schools and students are all unique, imposing a fixed curriculum from the outside may not be successful (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008). How could art teachers use PAR and ABCD to build meaningful curriculum with urban students?
In the following chapter, we explore the framework’s foundations and outline the critical response cycle steps. Finally, we offer suggestions for how to implement this pedagogy by considering two markedly different works of public art in two different cities.

Author

• Melanie L. Buffington, Virginia Commonwealth University