The History of American Art Education: Learning About Art in American Schools

The ideas, people, and events that developed art education are described and analyzed so that art educators and educators in general will have a better understanding of what has happened (and is happening) to visual art in the schools. Peter Smith raises the issue of art education's inordinate emphasis on Eurocentric art. He challenges the often expressed notion that the field of education is the cause of art education's problems and proposes that confused conceptions within the art world are just as much a root of the difficulty. No other book in art education history gives such close and analytical attention to the careers of women in the field. The materials on Germanic cultural and historical influences are unequaled as is the scholarly treatment of Viktor Lowenfeld, probably the most influential single figure in 20th-century American art education.