Mabel D'Amico (1909–1998): Reminiscences From the Past

• In Event: The Past Is Present: Ignored Histories of Art Education

Abstract

From the 1920s through the 1940s, many artist-teachers developed methods of creative self-expression in their teaching. The life and teachings of artist and art educator Mabel D’Amico (1909-1998), wife of Museum of Modern Art museum educator Victor D’Amico, are considered within this context. This paper constructs an educational biography of Mabel D’Amico using oral history as a primary method. Understanding Mabel D’Amico’s life as an artist and an educator can be a powerful way to uncover hidden histories of artist-teachers and women leaders from art education history.
Congdon and Degge (1997) argued that writing biographies of women art educators involves exploring the context of the family, the role of women living during the subject’s generation, and the culture surrounding her teaching and learning experiences (p. 139). In keeping with critical ways of experiencing and understanding the world, Wolff (1990) argued that a feminist interpretation of literature harnesses the institutional and social practices that provide the context of the work. Writing women’s stories calls for a kind of writing that breaks away from a linear logic and allows for a distinctive language to emerge that is “close to the body,” thus carving a space for women’s experiences to be noticeable (Suleiman, 1990).
Under the umbrella of narrative research, oral history consists of gathering personal reflections of events and their causes and effects from several individuals (Plumer, 1983, as cited in Creswell, 2007, p. 55). In the context of this paper, oral history opens new areas of inquiry within the biographical research of shadowed lives, particularly women’s stories and life experiences, thus giving the history of art education another dimension.
To gather the principal data, I interviewed two individuals who worked very closely with Mabel: Christopher Kohan and Marcia Cohl. This study is my attempt to construct a biographical account of Mabel D’Amico’s life using material gathered from these two interviews as well as a variety of primary documents collected from Mabel’s home in Amagansett.
This narrative of Mabel D’Amico provides a glimpse into an ordinary woman’s life. I argue that Mabel D’Amico’s determined personality and her ability to lead and create works of art can be seen as an extraordinary accomplishment given the context of her times. The ways in which the interviewees constructed their memories of Mabel trigger new inquiries within the context of biographical research and oral history in art education, thus inviting us to think further about rethinking forms of written histories and stories that remain in the shadows of the history of art education.
Mabel’s life extends the conversation on challenges and opportunities related to revealing the hidden histories of pedagogical progressives. This study invites scholars to dig deeply into training and pedagogical practices, historical and critical attitudes, and social milieu and environment of the time (Sandell, 1979) to divulge the stories of many unrecognized art educators. Given that women represent the majority of art teachers but not the majority of professors, the sociopolitical dimension is also worthy of consideration in future research.

Author

• Ami Kantawala, Teachers College, Columbia University