Migrant Form and Art's Education

Abstract

The fate of art's education looks like a cynical and rather hopeless process. Those who belong to the field pledged their loyalty to the discipline by dint of how they regard art as being inherently pedagogical – what is here called art's education. Decades of engagement in art's education leaves one travelling over spaces that present themselves as widening chasms between art's education (the pedagogical inherence of art) and art education (art's location within the structures of schooled education). Chasms aside, new borders and unnecessary walls keep being erected just as new territories and jurisdictions are continuously declared. Those of us who have always regarded themselves as migrants within the field would be forgiven to pine with nostalgia for when, not so long ago, art and education moved and roamed with pride and autonomy. Maybe it is this nostalgia which keeps us hoping, while knowing very well that often we tend to idealise the very ‘past’ in which we take false solace.