ABSTRACT
The authors of this chapter explore the notions of reconceptualization and post-reconceptualization at the crossroads of art education and curriculum studies. They discuss ongoing efforts to shift from traditional modes of art making and art thinking toward ones that are critical, political, and contextual, ones with the capacity to account for visual culture and ethical obligations to the broader public. They explore the creative self-expression movement of the 1920s and the discipline oriented movement that has its origins in the 1960s and transformed into the discipline based art education movement of the 1980s and 90s. These movements are explained as the pretext to the reconceptualization as visual culture, which is explained as a response to new images and technologies, relationships between humans and lived experienced in a networked world, and ways of theorizing visuality, and new spaces for visual culture. Exploring art-based research community based pedagogy, and eco-art education, the authors suggest art education is in the midst of a reconceptualization or new ways of assembling within a postmodern world. Having mapped out the present moment, the authors conclude by envisioning the next moment through a series of questions and statements about what the post-reconceptualization of art education might look like.
