Beginnings: Thoughts on Art and Education

As a child I always liked making things—constructing models, filling sketchbooks with drawings, and completing creative projects from every “How To” activity book from our small town library in rural southwest Virginia. It really wasn’t until I reached high school that I understood I was interested in art, and I started taking painting classes after school with a local artist who taught me how to paint landscapes, usually the kind that included a cloud made by dabbing a paint-dipped sponge onto the canvas. When I headed to college the idea of an art career started to sink in because I received an art scholarship and immersed myself in studio art classes and art history seminars—“The Ancient World,” “The Golden Age of Spanish Painting,” “The Art of China.” I remember sitting in those classes, listening to the hum of the 35mm slide projector and my professors waxing poetic about the Venus of Willendorf and Andy Warhol. So, after college when I took a position as a teacher of Art History, Studio Art and Spanish at a high school outside of New York City, I had a goal to enthrall the students with the wonders of art as I had experienced them—surely my students would rhapsodize about dramatic Caravaggesque light or the exquisite carvings of Egypt, and they would start to see art, and even the world, differently.

I was wrong.

When I began teaching, the simple act of entering the classroom was a daunting experience. I had passed the summer scrutinizing my notes from college and getting re-acquainted with Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, and so I forged ahead with my plan to unveil the power and mystery of art to these teenagers. Instead, I was challenged with questions like “Why is this so special, Mr. Crow?” or “My kid brother paints really well—why is this guy Pollock so famous?” I started to wonder what happened to the magic that I had experienced with art—the moments of revelation that my college professors had proclaimed, or the excitement of adding the final touches to a painting that I had shared with my studio art teachers. In fact, the other classes I was teaching weren’t going so well, either—two sections of Spanish III and a section of introductory drawing. Even my boldest attempts to translate the lessons I had experienced while in school failed, and I wondered how I could give these students the same joys I had experienced.

Years later, in my role as Educator in Charge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I had the opportunity to recount these early attempts at teaching to noted educator and philosopher-in-residence at Lincoln Center, Dr. Maxine Greene. I told her of my struggles, and how I wanted to give those students the same experiences that I once had. She looked at me with sympathy, and said simply: “That’s where you went wrong. Experiences can’t be given. They can only be had.”

Excellent educators create a climate for learning where transformative experiences can occur. This means teaching with passion, but also allowing room for learners to question, critique, reflect, and participate through different modalities and structures. Powerful experiences with art require participation, and a learner-centered, inquiry-driven approach to meaning-making.

Now, each time I begin to teach a new group of students, or begin a new semester, I think about my early attempts at teaching—my missteps and my assumptions. But more importantly, each of these new beginnings allows me to reconsider how to create a trusting space where both students and educators can take risks, embrace the unknown, and most of all, imagine what is possible.

About the Author

William B. Crow, Ph.D. is director of Lehigh University Art Galleries (LUAG) and professor of practice in the Department of Art, Architecture, and Design. Prior to his appointment as director, he was the inaugural Educator in Charge of Teaching and Learning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where he oversaw all educational programming for all ages across the museum's three sites.