<p> This study examines the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, its history, educational mission, and the ways in which its collection of primarily African American art can be used as an art education resource. The data collection for this qualitative case study included questionnaires focusing on the collection and the Center&rsquo;s history and mission, in-depth interviews with three Center administrators and one visual artist, informal personal communication, and observational notes. All data was examined using content analysis. Respondents indications concluded that the mission and goals of the Center grew out of its WPA beginnings and was primarily to support the artists and to educate the community about the value of African American art; that the Center&rsquo;s education mission revolved around its educational programming; that the art collection had been used in the past to teach about the Black Power Movement and makes references to important events in history; and that the Center&rsquo;s relationship to the community was multi-faceted and included outreach to local schools in after-school art programs. </p><p> The center&rsquo;s art collection, because of the themes inherent in many of the works, make important connections to key events in American history such as the WPA, WWII, the Great Depression and the Black migration that facilitates meaning making across the life span. The study&rsquo;s results provided evidence of the South Side Community Art Center&rsquo;s role as not only a repository for regional and national African American art and artists, but also as an educational hub for visual culture, art study and relevance for contemporary life themes.</p>

<p> This dissertation utilized a Delphi methodology in discovery of the perceived outcomes and teaching strategies that are common for art history survey courses taught at higher education institutions throughout the United States. A group of art history faculty, chairs, and current researchers focused on studying teaching and learning within art history weighed in on their perspectives through three mixed method survey rounds, ranking the importance of various themes developed through the responses. The results discover that there is still a strong preference for a Socratic seminar teaching strategy, while the participants also highlighted other outcomes and strategies that are important areas for future research in the discipline.</p>

<p> This study is an overview of how museums utilize informal learning as a primary source of engagement to improve overall visitor experience while building community interest. For this study, it was important to look at the history and purpose of museums origin and the evolution of their function from an art institution to an educational institution. The top 3 Los Angeles based museums; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty and the Museum of Contemporary Art were all put under the various scopes to deduce if they are utilizing their education department to be the best of their ability to create meaningful experiences for their visitors. They were evaluated based on their use of technology, use of dialogue and the overall experience within the museum. Lastly, this study stresses the importance of public art to incorporate all three areas of informal learning.</p>

The purpose of this study was to implement and assess a curriculum on African and African-American art and artists appropriate for elementary school children in a multicultural urban setting in the northeastern part of the United States. The program involved 145 students in a curriculum that includes biographical sketches, slide presentations, studio visits to prominent artists, and hands-on activities. The students were in grades three, four and five. The students learned the three eras of African-American art: the Apprentice, the Journeyman, and the Harlem Renaissance. They also studied the art of Egypt in the time of King Tutankhamen, as well as that of Nubia. More recent African art, including the artifacts of the Dogon people and the thumb painting of the Ndebele women, exposed the children to techniques and designs they could copy. The effects of the program were qualitatively evaluated through a pre-test and post-test administered to these classes. Two sets of open-ended questions were used to assess changes in the children's understanding. The students' perceptions of themselves as artists and their awareness and appreciation of art in their communities were also important components of this program. The program had an impact on the children and can become a segment in the elementary art curriculum guide. At present, there is none included in the guide representing the art of Africans and African-Americans.

The vibrant school of printmaking which emerged and flourished in New Zealand between 1900 and 1950 forms the subject of this thesis. It examines the attitudes of the printmakers, many of whom regarded the print as the most democratic of art forms and one that should reflect the realities of everyday life. Their subject matter, contemporary city scenes, people at work and leisure, local landscapes, Maori and indigenous flora and fauna, is analysed and revealed as anticipating by over a decade that of regionalist painters. They are also identified as the first New Zealand artists to draw attention to social and environmental issues. Trained under the British South Kensington art education system, New Zealand printmakers placed great importance on craftsmanship. Although some worked in a realist style others experimented with abstraction and surrealism, placing them among the forefront of New Zealand artists receptive to modern art. Expatriate New Zealand printmakers played significant roles in three major printmaking movements abroad, the Artists' International Alliance, Atelier 17 and the Claude Flight Linocut Movement. The thesis redresses the failure of existing histories of New Zealand art to recognise the existence of a major twentieth-century art movement. It identifies the main factors contributing to the low status of printmaking in New Zealand. Commercial artists rather than those with a fine arts background led the Quoin Club, which initiated a New Zealand school of printmaking in 1916; Gordon Tovey's overthrow of the South Kensington system in 1945 devalued the craftsmanship so important to printmakers; and the rise of modernism, which gave priority to formal values and abstraction, further exacerbated institutional indifference to the print. The adoption of Maori imagery by printmakers resulted in recent art historians retrospectively accusing them of cultural appropriation. Even the few printmakers who attained some recognition were criticised for their involvement in textile and bookplate design and book-illustration. Key artists discussed in the thesis include James Boswell, Stephen Champ, Frederick Coventry, Rona Dyer, Arnold Goodwin, Thomas Gulliver, Trevor Lloyd, Stewart Maclennan, Gilbert Meadows, John L. Moore, E. Mervyn Taylor, Arthur Thompson, Herbert Tornquist, Frank Weitzel, Hilda Wiseman, George Woods, John Buckland Wright and Adele Younghusband. Details of the approximately 3,000 prints created during this period are recorded in a database, and summarised in the Printmakers' Survey included in Volume Two. In addition reproductions of 156 prints are illustrated and documented; while a further 43 prints are reproduced within the text of Volume One.