Dipti Desai

• Ph.D University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Managing Director at New York University

This essay explores the specific artworks of Asian American artists Tomie Arai and Flo Oy Wong as complex articulations between culture, identity, history, and memory. Based on oral history interviews that were integral parts of their artistic processes, Arai and Wong created works that explored the family histories and memories of Asian immigrants...

The state of the world keeps me up at night, questioning my role as a social justice educator. I think with, through, and around what social change means. Reflecting on my practice, I have followed Western/colonial research and educational methodologies, knowing that they need to be challenged but often being unable to do so. I make present this li...

Racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity are increasingly recognized by nation‐states around the globe as a new reality that has to be addressed. This has led to educational reform movements known as multicultural education. The question of how to manage diversity in order to maintain political stability has shaped the ways in which education, includ...

The question we address in this paper - What are the connections between contemporary art, education, and activism? - opens a space to investigate artistic activism as a site of pedagogical possibility. Artist activists ask critical questions, critique and comment on the pressing social, political and economic issues of our times; they also design...

In this article we explore two urban interventions art projects in the public sphere designed by our Masters’ students at New York University as they set the stage for a discussion on how urban art interventions can function as a form of critical public pedagogy. We argue that these kinds of public art projects provided a space for dialogue with pe...

This interview with a few members of Gran Fury explores and draws lessons about the pedagogy of collective activists artistic practice within schools and in the public sphere. Based on an educational workshop conducted by Gran Fury several years ago with graduate students, the conversation highlights not only the how and why of artistic activist ed...

In this reflective essay, I draw on my experience as the Director of the art+education programmes at New York University to explore what happens if we shift art education practices from primarily an object based understanding of art that is unconnected to our daily lives to one where art is a living form that makes things happen. By focusing on an...

In this article we examine the racialized silence by whites, locating its emergence in history, examining whiteness and pointing to ways that we can begin to address the social context of colour in art education in both K-12 and teacher preparation programmes. Drawing on our experiences teaching in both high school and university classrooms, we arg...

Today we learn about terrorism and immigration projected through the lens of justice largely from visual sites of public pedagogy (i.e., television, Internet, films, etc.). Given the pervasive and persuasive agenda of public pedagogy, schools have to rethink what it means to educate students in a visual age where new modes of information and cultur...

Not only can art expose the norms and hierarchies of the existing social order, but it can give us the conceptual means to invent another, making what had once seemed utterly impossible entirely realistic. (Hardt & Negri, 2009)

This article uses the lens of contemporary visual art as a counternarrative to explore the racialization of immigration in the United States and its relationship to education. Drawing on critical race theory, I argue that today several artists use their artistic practice to intervene strategically in the immigration debates. These artistic interven...

History as Art, Art as History pioneers methods for using contemporary works of art in the social studies and art classroom to enhance an understanding of visual culture and history. The fully-illustrated interdisciplinary teaching toolkit provides an invaluable pedagogical resource-complete with theoretical background and practical suggestions for...

Schools have always been subject to an overwhelming variety of socio-political demands, which shift in response to the political climate--impacting art education in different ways. The current debate on social and political issues in art education is not new. Beginning with McFee (1966), and particularly since the 1970s, there has been a growing bo...

This article examines the relationship between globalization and postmodern multicultural art education. The questions that drive my investigation are: What is the role of postmodern multiculturalism in this current phase of globalization and what challenges does globalization pose for multiculturalism? I explore the shifts in the field of art that...

The visual arts, like multicultural education, play a vital role in our understanding of diverse human experiences. In this article we explore the role of community-based contemporary art in education. We consider the ways that art practices speak to issues of history and culture as a site of investigation and a method of investigation in pedagogic...

This article examines the relationship between globalization and postmodern multicultural art education. The questions that drive my investigation are: What is the role of postmodern multiculturalism in this current phase of globalization and what challenges does globalization pose for multiculturalism? I explore the shifts in the field of art that...

This is a report on a peace project done at New York University, following the events of 9/11. The authors set their discussion into the framework of activist art and describe the social as well as artistic outcomes of their project.

This article discusses the place sexual diversity has within multicultural art education with a specific focus on the ways culture is discussed in multicultural arteducationdiscourses. Idraw on queer theory's contribution to issues of identity and subjectivity to address and rethink the concept of culture. I specifically analyze how the term "cultu...

This article discusses the place sexual diversity has within multicultural art education with a specific focus on the ways culture is discussed in multicultural arteducationdiscourses. Idraw on queer theory's contribution to issues of identity and subjectivity to address and rethink the concept of culture. I specifically analyze how the term “cultu...

The recent shift in contemporary art of artists using ethnography as an integral component in their artistic practice opens a range of issues regarding the relationship between experience in the field, interpretation, and artistic representation. Through a focused investigation of site-specific art, I discuss the problems with "pseudo-ethnography"...

This paper examines the notion of "accurate" and "authentic" representations of culture in multicultural art education discourses. Drawing on feminism and neo-Marxist analyses of culture, I call into question the taken for granted view that replacing biased and stereotypic representations with purported accurate and authentic representations will f...

Argues that social class, race, gender, and sexuality are often unexplored in art education. Discusses the invisibility of elderly women's art due to aesthetic preferences for originality; racism as an invisible, institutionalized system; and the invisibility of discourse concerning homosexual world views embedded in gay and lesbian art. (DSK)