The Fayum mummy portraits from ancient Greco-Roman Egypt are exceptional in that they are the only surviving classical (ancient Greek and Roman) panel paintings from antiquity and are antecedents of Byzantine icons. Moreover, they hold important implications for art educators regarding multicultural education. They spotlight an exemplary pathway…

An art curriculum is a composite of cultural expressions, the values and experiences that students and teachers bring with them into the classroom, and the social contexts of the learning environment (Kraehe, 2010). In developing art curricular materials, educators are encouraged to integrate a diversity of cultural perspectives. The contemporary…

The author introduces Hong Kong-based paper-tearing artist Sing Man Lee. Lee's paper-tearing art offers a lens for learning about traditional Chinese cultures as well as contemporary life in China. This instructional resource can serve as part of a multicultural art education curriculum, enriching students' art experiences by connecting their…

Multicultural or integrative art education helps students understand themselves and the diverse changing visual world around them. This article highlights the the tradition of Chinese joss paper and shows how it can be added to the repertoire of a multicultural art curriculum or an integrative art curriculum that enables the teacher to infuse…

"Why do they always tell you what "not" to do? Why don't they tell you what to do?" a student in an art education course for certification complained. The course is required for undergraduate students and post-baccalaureates, and introduces multicultural education and topics related to teaching, including educational philosophy, school law, and…

Photography is a powerful medium with which to explore social issues and concerns through the intersection of artistic form and concept. Through the discussions of images and suggested activities, students will understand various ways photographers have documented and addressed racism and discrimination. This Instructional Resource presents a…

Art museums and other institutions of informal learning can promote multicultural understanding by collaborating with community ethnic groups and designing exhibitions that richly characterize the cultures they represent. Through the lens of educational programming for the exhibition "30 Americans," this article describes how both the Corcoran…

In this article, the author describes how high school and university students in Georgia and members of a small weaving pueblo in Oaxaca, Mexico, collaborated in designing and creating a mural in the central market ("mercado") of the pueblo. A number of lessons emerged from this multi-cultural collaboration. First they learned that using…

A fairly common understanding among teachers is that the study of the arts opens up the study of cultures. Appreciating the artistic expressions of a culture enhances student understanding of that culture and its people. Beyond appreciation, when students make artworks, they create meaning and explore their perceptions of various cultural roles.…

The author conducted a descriptive case study that used artmaking to investigate the phenomenon of representation of personal and cultural identities. Set within the middle school visual arts classroom, the study focused on three female, dual-culture 6th-grade students. "Dual-culture" is defined in this context as a person born in the…

With increasing emphasis on multicultural art education and integrative pedagogy, educators have incorporated community resources, such as cultural artifacts exhibited in art museums, to enrich their programs. Cultural artifacts are human-made objects which generally reveal historic information about cultural values, beliefs, and traditions.…

Art educators, like many other educators born or socialized within the main-stream culture of a society, seldom have an opportunity to identify, question, and challenge their cultural values, beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives because school culture typically reinforces those they learn at home and in their communities (Bush & Simmons, 1990).…

The importance of multicultural art education has been addressed by art educators over the past 15 years. Art educators maintain that art is capable of empowering mutual respect and appreciation for people, objects, and ideas among diverse groups. Although many educators/teachers use non-Western artworks or artifacts to enrich their art programs,…

By its very nature, art offers a rich bounty of cultural exchange. Cultural influences guide expression in art, and art records and influences culture. Helping students view the world beyond their own cultural perspectives has potential to enrich them as human beings. In this article, the author summarizes some earlier foundational theories that…