ABSTRACT
This chapter presents inclusive approaches to teaching students art historical inquiry so that students may discover artistic innovations, practices, and multiple ways of knowing. It aims to facilitate students’ ability to take the lead as investigators who search for meaning by examining the clues presented in art and the contextual factors that surround its development. Inclusive art history is the practice of presenting art history from diversified lenses that include creative works and scholarship by artists and art historians who are representative of humanity’s cultures, races, gender identities, geographies, and abilities. Art historians and other theorists have expanded the discipline of art history beyond the fine arts to include influences from popular culture and new technologies. Teachers can explain to students that people decode icons to understand part of the story the artist is telling. Art historians formulate hypotheses to examine their theories by applying factual knowledge from artworks, literary sources, and their expert intuition.
