Point of View: Connecting with Contemporary Art

As an educator who loves all things history, I try to give my K–3 students a solid knowledge of art history by exposing them to as much of it as I can. As is likely the case with your students, the first question mine always ask is how and when the artist died. Seven years ago, I decided to break this cycle by diving into all things contemporary.

A Shift to Contemporary Art
The world of contemporary art can be an intimidating one. When talking with other art educators, I often find that many of us are not well-versed in what’s happening in the art world today. College art history courses typically focus on dead white European males (DWEMs). While these artists offer value in where some art has come from, they don’t offer insight into where it is going.

Don’t get me wrong—these artists have a place in the classroom, and they should be taught, but there are so many living artists today that can be either tied in with them or even become a focal point of your lesson. As my K–3 artists progress through grade levels, my curriculum becomes more contemporary, culminating in a third-grade curriculum that is 100% contemporary-based. Building up to this allows me to introduce students to past artists I feel they should know, while gradually introducing them to more and more living artists.

Why Contemporary?
I chose to focus on contemporary art because of its relevance to my students. Artists today are dealing with current issues, ideas, media, and beliefs that my students see and hear about in their everyday lives. Because kids can connect with these ideas, they are more interested in what they are learning about, and I have seen student engagement go through the roof. Students have gone from thinking about artists in the past tense to wanting to be artists when they grow up.

Talking about the present provides opportunities to talk about living artists, as well as things that are happening in the news. The past few years have provided some great talking points for my students. We discussed the ongoing spat between Stuart Semple and Anish Kapoor and then created and named our own colors. We’ve had countless discussions about Banksy’s latest antics. When the roof of Notre Dame caught fire, we spent a few classes learning about its Gothic architecture and rose window and then redesigned what the new roof should look like.

Opportunities
One of my students’ favorite things about studying living artists is that it gives us the opportunity to interact with them. Many of the artists we learn about aren’t the unreachable megastars we think of such as Yayoi Kusama or Jeff Koons (although they are included in my curriculum), they are everyday artists and art educators like you and me. These artists have Instagram or Twitter pages and get just as excited about a third-grader learning about them as the third-grader does about receiving a comment or like from the artist.

Throughout the past, diverse artists have been neglected and rejected from art history. I’ve found that contemporary art offers a much broader representation of art. While I teach a heavily white population, my students of color have expressed excitement when we’re learning about an artist who resembles them. All students should have the opportunity to see living artists who look like them.

Challenges
The biggest hurdle with tackling contemporary art is finding artists who offer value and integrity to my lesson’s objective. It’s difficult knowing who to teach when you don’t know where to start. I regularly check several websites, such as This Is Colossal (my personal favorite), BOOOOOOOM, Design Boom, gallery and museum websites, as well as other art educator’s Instagram pages.

There are so many artists out there—you just need to be open to finding and learning about them. Take the dive and give contemporary artists a shot. I’m proud to say that my students no longer ask me when the artist died and have now replaced that question with comments like, “This artist is younger than my dad!”