POINT OF VIEW

Brett Henzig

Teaching contemporary art can feel intimidating. By definition, contemporary art lacks consistent visual characteristics, geographic or cultural origins, and a central mission or manifesto. Under some interpretations, it even includes earlier movements, such as modernism. Yet somehow, you know it when you see it, and often your biggest clue is that you donʼt know what it is youʼre looking at.

Contemporary art casts a wide net, but when educators look for contemporary art and artists to share with learners, that net is often cast toward the coasts, to the big cities and their art museums, to expensive galleries and exclusive art fairs. This unintentionally narrows the scope of what counts as Contemporary (with a capital C) art—and that same bias can get passed on to our students.

Reclaiming Contemporary
I’ve found it advantageous to begin a journey through contemporary art by reclaiming the word contemporary, centering on its definition per Merriam-Webster as being “marked by characteristics of the present period” and “happening, existing, living, or coming into being during the same period of time.” The most powerful variation of that definition, however, is “one of the same or nearly the same age as another.” This idea is key to what I call “the MOST Contemporary Art.”

In this context, “the MOST Contemporary Art” refers to artwork created by people who share studentsʼ time, place, and lived experience.

Where to Find the MOST Contemporary Art
College art programs bring artist-educators from across the country and around the world to work with students. Even in the smallest markets, there are skilled, experienced, and diverse artists offering broad, creative, real-world perspectives. The students they teach fill hallways, studios, and galleries with fresh artwork that reflects current ideas, experimentation, and growth.

Seek out local artists in your community, and never forget that, as an art instructor, you are also a contemporary artist.

When I worked at an art college, high-school groups would often visit our campus after having toured our local art museum and area galleries. I liked to ask what they had seen and what they had enjoyed, both to guide what I showed them next and to better understand their experiences. Many students struggled to connect with the museum and gallery artwork, either because it felt disconnected from their experiences or because it was too deeply coded in institutional Contemporary visual language.

Those who read wall labels sometimes gained the context they needed, but many of the artists still felt distant. They lived too far away, were too much older, or were invested in issues and circumstances far removed from the experiences of our youth. For these reasons, I’ve expanded the idea of “living or coming into being during the same period of time” to include “place.”

Close to Home
On campus, students recognized references and ideas in the artwork more readily. They also encountered unfinished or unsuccessful works that revealed learning and growth, not just polished pieces selected for exhibition. Museums and galleries play an essential role in representing the scope of visual art and our shared yet diverse human experiences, but learning and understanding are incremental, and appreciating the arts is the first and most vital step in the process. For many learners, encountering “the MOST Contemporary Art” offers a more accessible entry point.

Community as Contemporary
My current role as director of programming at a small arts nonprofit brings me into collaboration with local artists at all stages of their careers—some just out of high school and others seasoned professionals. We work to develop their skills in teaching artistry and bring them to local communities (schools, neighborhoods, nontraditional spaces) to share their creativity.

The experiences of these artists more closely align with those of the learners they engage because they have shared the same contexts and communities that, for them, developed into a creative practice. The works they make and share resonate in ways that need far less decoding and historical context to understand. Their practice is influenced by and responds to circumstances present in our shared community. These artists also have networks of their own that reach beyond their locality to other contemporaries, and can they often connect to artists who have been dubbed Contemporary with the capital C.

Seek out local artists in your community, and never forget that, as an art instructor, you are also a contemporary artist.

Becoming Contemporary
Beginning a studentʼs journey into contemporary art with “the MOST Contemporary” artists—those closest to them in age, place, and experience—creates an immediate connection and sparks an understanding that can sustain their interest in art and creativity. It gives them a person to go to, outside of school, to connect with and point their caregivers to as a realistic example and model of what is possible in the arts. It shows them that art is a viable pathway for them and people like them: their contemporaries.

Brett Henzig is the director of programming at Artists Working in Education in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. bretthenzig@gmail.com