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Login Create AccountSome projects lend themselves to controversy. Other times, controversial subject matter can sneak up on you unexpectedly. Schools may not be excited to court controversy, but I am. From my perspective, when students create challenging work that pushes boundaries, I’ve done my job!
In my classroom, I’m interested in examining ways artists have stirred the pot. I use controversial works to support students in expressing their own perspectives or taking a stand. The goal is to have students be able to engage in conversation about the work through thoughtful investigation and questioning.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you allow students to blunder around insulting and offending at will. You must set some ground rules and engage in discussion throughout the process.
As artists, making work that incites an emotional response is powerful and impactful. But, sometimes, that same work can be seen as divisive or polarizing. Art is a vehicle for change. For young artists just finding their voices, it is a powerful tool.
One of the first examples presented to me as controversial was this piece by the Guerilla Girls.
This work was inspired by a survey of paintings and sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1984. The anonymous group of female artists began a poster campaign highlighting the fact that only 13 of the 169 artists at the museum were women, while the majority of the nude subjects of art at the museum were female.
The Guerilla Girls have continued to pursue their agenda of exposing gender, race, and other biases within the art world. I love showing their work to students because it helps frame ways to bring attention to an issue with both humor and hard facts. If students decide to address a topic, they have to have done their research.
Contemporary issues like Black Lives Matter, #Metoo, and March for Our Lives also get students thinking. Showing students how these movements are being documented in different ways can start deep discussions. We talk about how a photographer or artist’s background and biases can influence how events are portrayed and remembered throughout history.
This photo of Ieshia Evans during a protest in Baton Rouge was taken by Photographer Jonathan Bachman and has become iconic.
It’s been dissected and reinterpreted and shows how powerful a single photograph can be in documenting a cause. Students in my class investigate projects of their own which bring light to topics that are close to them. These types of projects can be vulnerable and revealing for students. At the same time, this type of work can show students how powerful their voices can be.
When discussing work like that mentioned above, it’s important to do some work upfront to set your students up for success.
Here are three points to keep in mind:
But even with the front-loaded approach, things still might spin away from you.
As these challenges emerge, you might wrestle with some of these questions:
As I worked through these questions, this was the point where my department and I engaged my school in creating a process for addressing challenging student artwork. It’s since been implemented several times.
Different people have different opinions about what constitutes controversial work, and the place you may encounter the most resistance might be from your administration. Personally, I believe a healthy tension with administration means you’re doing your job. You are teaching your students to think and question, and that will likely push those higher up. But, it’s important to remember they have a very different role from you in the school. They’re thinking of the big picture and the school community at large. Therefore, it’s important to come to a solution that works for both parties and set a protocol for addressing these situations.
When I encountered pushback around some controversial work created in my room, it led to the creation of some ground rules and processes to help address similar situations in the future.
The steps we created begin before work even arises to the level of administrative discussion. It’s important to note I work at the secondary level. Your steps and key players may look different depending on what level you teach.
Here are the seven steps:
A key component of this process is keeping the students involved throughout. Having them engage in the dialogue helps keep them from feeling like they are bystanders in the process. This way, they can voice their perspective and concerns. This process formalized some steps to take with our administration. Though it isn’t perfect and feels clunky at times, it has helped to keep an open dialogue at the school around artwork that challenges and pushes our understanding of the world- which is ultimately what we encourage our students to do.
How does your school address controversial artwork?
What strategies have you used in the classroom to build student voice and agency around controversial subjects?
Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.