Contemporary Art Museum Education in the United States of America and South Africa: A retrospective analysis and proposals for the future

Kinsman, Houghton Desmond

Contemporary Art Museum Education in the United States of America and South Africa: A retrospective analysis and proposals for the future

Thesis / Dissertation

2017

Abstract

The conditions of tertiary education in South Africa (SA) have recently come under intense public scrutiny. Concerns over the state of higher education in SA reflect global debates, which include those in the United States of America (USA), around institutional accessibility, transformation, and the declining role of the humanities in tertiary institutions. This dissertation, therefore, explores art museum education (AME) as a possible alternative, accessible form of higher education. It interrogates the conduciveness of the profession by reviewing AME's history in both countries, undertaking case studies of pertinent pedagogy at the Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) in Cape Town, SA and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Miami, USA, and it makes proposals, by reference of the work of Eduoard Glissant, as to how to further develop this academic idea. It is the belief of this research that AME has the potential to offer these tertiary programmes, however, educators must first address their current lack of professional stature and occupational shortcomings. Evidence uncovered in this four-part study shows that AME in both countries operates in challenging conditions today and continues to struggle with a lack of professional recognition. Case studies at the ICA Miami and ISANG highlight the fact that educators need to urgently address their inferior institutional standing, while they also detail the current conduciveness of AME — by showing the effects of indepth educator research practices and that experiments with higher education are already taking place. Consequently, the proposals present potential ways to enhance these experiments, and encourage educators to approach their practices in new critical, and academic ways. This research contributes a new dimension to the field as AME as a model for higher education is a relatively unexplored topic. The research also helps address the lack of documentation of AME in the USA and SA, and it suggests a possible way to create an alternative to increasingly inaccessible tertiary institutions. Additionally, it opens up space for further research by raising questions such as: will the status of AME educators ever change? What still needs to be done practically, administratively, and bureaucratically for AME to become a form of tertiary education? And how might answering these questions help address the need for new academic spaces as well as the demise of the liberal arts and humanities at tertiary levels?

Keywords

Fine Art

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