Art teachers' attitudes toward the Florida Sunshine State Standards for the Visual Arts

The State of Florida developed the Sunshine State Standards For the Arts Curriculum Framework as part of an initiative to raise student achievement in response to national calls for educational reform. The content-based art education approach used in the Sunshine State Standards reflects a viewpoint advocated by prominent art educators and professional art education organizations for more than two decades. Successful implementation of the Sunshine State Standards curriculum approach requires that art teachers be acquainted with and knowledgeable in the four foundational content areas of the arts: studio art, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics. ^ The purpose of this study was to examine art teachers' viewpoints and attitudes toward the content-based art education approach contained in the Florida Curriculum Framework Sunshine State Standards for the Visual Arts. A survey was conducted in order to obtain these viewpoints. Surveys were sent to 440 Miami-Dade County Public School art teachers. A total of 138 elementary, middle and senior high school level art teachers participated in the study. ^ Factors and variables explored in this study included teachers' level of education, type of community, and grade levels taught. The principal methods of analyses employed in the study were descriptive statistics used to display frequencies and percentages. In addition, cross tabulations with Chi-square tests, and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to examine responses to the survey items. ^ The results of the study revealed that the majority of art teachers supported the content-based art education approach used in the Sunshine State Standards for the Arts. However significant differences appeared in the responses to survey items as a result of art teachers' level of education, type of community, and grade levels. The results of this study indicate a need for further examination of teacher training and professional development programs. ^

Publics, visibilité et reconnaissance en art contemporain : étude du cas de Ai Weiwei

Pour respecter les droits d’auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire a été dépouillée de certains documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

The Role of Art in Computer Game Design

Computer games are significant since they embody our youngsters’ engagement with contemporary culture, including both play and education. These games rely heavily on visuals, systems of sign and expression based on concepts and principles of Art and Architecture. We are researching a new genre of computer games, ‘Educational Immersive Environments’ (EIEs) to provide educational materials suitable for the school classroom. Close collaboration with subject teachers is necessary, but we feel a specific need to engage with the practicing artist, the art theoretician and historian. Our EIEs are loaded with multimedia (but especially visual) signs which act to direct the learner and provide the ‘game-play’ experience forming semiotic systems. We suggest the hypothesis that computer games are a space of deconstruction and reconstruction (DeRe): When players enter the game their physical world and their culture is torn apart; they move in a semiotic system which serves to reconstruct an alternate reality where disbelief is suspended. The semiotic system draws heavily on visuals which direct the players’ interactions and produce motivating gameplay. These can establish a reconstructed culture and emerging game narrative. We have recently tested our hypothesis and have used this in developing design principles for computer game designers. Yet there are outstanding issues concerning the nature of the visuals used in computer games, and so questions for contemporary artists. Currently, the computer game industry employs artists in a ‘classical’ role in production of concept sketches, storyboards and 3D content. But this is based on a specification from the client which restricts the artist in intellectual freedom. Our DeRe hypothesis places the artist at the generative centre, to inform the game designer how art may inform our DeRe semiotic spaces. This must of course begin with the artists’ understanding of DeRe in this time when our ‘identities are becoming increasingly fractured, networked, virtualized and distributed’ We hope to persuade artists to engage with the medium of computer game technology to explore these issues. In particular, we pose several questions to the artist: (i) How can particular ‘periods’ in art history be used to inform the design of computer games? (ii) How can specific artistic elements or devices be used to design ‘signs’ to guide the player through the game? (iii) How can visual material be integrated with other semiotic strata such as text and audio?

Integrated science and art education for creative climate change communication

An interdisciplinary field trip to a remote marine lab joined graduate students from fine arts and natural resource science departments to think creatively about the topic of climate change and science communication. We followed a learning cycle framework to allow the students to explore marine ecosystems and participate in scientific lectures, group discussions, and an artist-led project making abstract collages representing climate change processes. Students subsequently worked in small groups to develop environmental communication material for public visitors. We assessed the learning activity and the communication product using pre- and post-field trip participant surveys, focus group discussions, and critiques by art and communication experts of the products. Significant changes in knowledge about climate change occurred in program participants. Incorporating artists and the arts into this activity helped engage multiple senses and emphasized social interaction, as well as providing support to participants to think creatively. The production of art helped to encourage peer learning and normalize the different views among participants in communicating about climate change impacts. Students created effective communication products based on external reviews. Disciplinary differences in cultures, language, and standards challenged participating faculty, yet unanticipated outcomes such as potentially transformative learning and improved teacher evaluations resulted.

King of the Renaissance: Art and Politics at the Neapolitan Court of Ferrante I, 1458-1494

In the second half of the fifteenth century, King Ferrante I of Naples (r. 1458-1494) dominated the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world. His court was home to artists, writers, musicians, and ambassadors from England to Egypt and everywhere in between. Yet, despite its historical importance, Ferrante’s court has been neglected in the scholarship. This dissertation provides a long-overdue analysis of Ferrante’s artistic patronage and attempts to explicate the king’s specific role in the process of art production at the Neapolitan court, as well as the experiences of artists employed therein. By situating Ferrante and the material culture of his court within the broader discourse of Early Modern art history for the first time, my project broadens our understanding of the function of art in Early Modern Europe. I demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, King Ferrante was a sophisticated patron of the visual arts whose political circumstances and shifting alliances were the most influential factors contributing to his artistic patronage. Unlike his father, Alfonso the Magnanimous, whose court was dominated by artists and courtiers from Spain, France, and elsewhere, Ferrante differentiated himself as a truly Neapolitan king. Yet Ferrante’s court was by no means provincial. His residence, the Castel Nuovo in Naples, became the physical embodiment of his commercial and political network, revealing the accretion of local and foreign visual vocabularies that characterizes Neapolitan visual culture.