Like most efforts at educational reform, initial proposals for the teaching of art criticism represented a promising direction for practice rather than a fully developed educational plan. Educators during the 1950s and 1960s, who first proposed art criticism as an alternative to studio work, viewed it as a remedy for a number of problems with…

Addresses three questions to characterize the discipline of art criticism and delineate its role in instruction: (1) What is a discipline? (2) In what sense is art criticism a discipline? and (3) How, specifically, is art criticism to inform educational practice? Links this discussion to assumptions in Discipline-Based Art Education. (DSK)