Inclusion, Diversity and Globalisation - The National Society for ...

08 Secondary: The British Museum: inspiring art09British Museum Poster: Inspiring Art112 134 510 112 316 17 18 19The British Museum’s potential for exploring the human formin world art is unsurpassed. Here is just a taste of the diversityof the Museum’s collection: the abstract, the idealised and thenaturalistic, 2-D and 3-D images, carved, moulded and cast, instone, ceramic, metal and on paper. Sculptor Marc Quinn’swords are a testament to the Museum’s contemporaryrelevance: “My sculpture of Alison Lapper on TrafalgarSquare’s Fourth Plinth was part of a series inspired by being inthe British Museum and seeing how people reacted tofragmented Greek sculptures, with their limbs missing. Theysaid how fantastically beautiful they were, the greatest evermade, but if someone the same shape had come into the room,like Alison, they would have been embarrassed.”614 1578 9Key to poster:1. Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). The Chinese warrior YanQing (detail). Colour woodblock print. Japan, c. 1827-1830.Loaned by Professor Arthur R. Miller (10044)2. Stella Steyn (1907–1987), Schematic figure, lithograph andrelief print on pink tissue paper, c.1933. © Estate of StellaSteyn, courtesy of the Gorry Gallery, Dublin3. Standing male and female pottery figurines. Mexico,200 BC–AD 5004. Ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child. Paris, France,c. 1310–13305. Nkisi figure made of wood, iron, nails, string, cloth andfibre. Democratic Republic of Congo, Late 19th/early 20thcentury6. Ancestral male figure with tattooed face and inlaid haliotisshell eyes. New Zealand, date TBC. Mid 19th century7. Tile depicting a female figure holding a bottle; ceramic,‘Kubachi’ ware; polychrome underglaze painted fritware,Iran, ca. 17008. Brass head of a ruler with a beaded crown. Ife, Nigeria,14th–early 15th century AD9. Silver votive offering in the shape of a hand. Syria, 20thcentury10. Painting on paper of a lady standing by a flowering tree.India, late 18th century11. Porcelain figure of Budai Hesheng. China, Ming Dynasty,148612. Colossal right foot made of marble. Roman, found nearNaples, 1st–2nd century AD13. The auspicious marks on the feet of the Buddha. From thestupa at Amaravati, southern India, 2nd century AD14. Painted wooden board of a figure. Papua New Guinea,20th century15. Red-figured amphora with twisted handles. Greece,c. 480 BC.16. Feather god head. Hawaiian Islands, early 18th century17. Standing figure of the goddess Tara. Sri Lanka, 8th–9thcentury AD18. Marble figure of a woman, Cyclades, Greece, about2800–2300 BC19. Michelangelo (1475–1564), Study for Adam in the fresco onthe vault of the Sistine Chapel, red chalk, c. 1511Except where stated, all photographs are © The Trustees of theBritish MuseumThe British Museum is launching a range of new taughtprogrammes and resources to support art and design atsecondary level and at AS/A2. Programmes include freegallery-based workshops combining discussion withmaking activities. The workshops will explore themes suchas Identity, Environments, Collections and Sketchbooks.Students will be encouraged to explore objects contextuallyas well as to make links with contemporary practice andsociety, so developing their ability to think laterally. Onlineresources will provide ideas for making the most of a visit tothe Museum and include downloadable presentations ondifferent themes and topics for classroom use. You can alsofind out about study days for older students and privateviews of new exhibitions. www.britishmuseum.org/schoolsBook reviewAfricanCaribbeanPupils in ArtEducationby Paul DashAfrican Caribbean Pupils in Art EducationPaul Dash, Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 2010,xvii + 223 pages, ISBN 978-94-6091-048-7This is a pioneering, hard-hitting book whichoffers no easy solutions to some of the mostprotracted issues relating to race and education inthe art and design classroom, faced by both pupilsand teachers. This work is clearly focussed on asingle theme, the learning of African Caribbeanpupils in art and design classrooms in the UnitedKingdom. The author brings to this study a wealthof personal experience and reflection about theclassroom. He also offers us the results of a surveyof children’s and teachers’ experiences which heundertook to expand his and our understandingof the dynamics involved in multicultural andethnically diverse classrooms, especially oneswhere black pupils form a significant majority.He also offers the reader some valuable resourcematerials and references that should enrich thesyllabus for all pupils.The author’s basic premise is that the slavetrade had a deeply damaging impact on thecultures of those who experiencedtransportation. As Dash writes, ‘the rupture ofthe slave trade has had a lasting often negativeeffect on the way they elaborate a sense of self andposition themselves in the world’. As a resultAfrican Caribbean cultures, deniedrepresentation, have become invisible. Dashlikens the slave trade to the Big Bang, an eventwhich echoes through the generations and stillhas a lasting legacy. Dash employs KamauBraithwaite’s concept of the ‘absence of ruins’ tocharacterise the artistic difficulty that AfricanCaribbeans face in seeking their cultural identity.This is particularly the case for the visual arts,where the link with Africa is virtually erased. Theauthor cites CLR James’ blunt statement, ‘We areBlack in skin, but the African civilization is notours. The basis of our civilization in theCaribbean is an adaptation of Westerncivilization’. But, Dash argues, despite theircontinual contribution to the development ofBritish imperial wealth, African Caribbeansremain, in an important symbolic sense,strangers or outsiders ‘looking into a differentworld of representation to which they are obligedto find an accommodation’. It is a world in whichmany black students feel ambivalent, and being‘Black British’ remains for them problematic bothat school and in the wider world of cultural andpolitical identity. Dash warns the teacher thatthese pupils may have scant interest in theCaribbean let alone Africa, and ‘Cuba is as alien tothem as Russia or Kurdistan’. What they reallyvalue is the recognition of Black achievement andhow this contributes to their own self-esteem.The author has a high distain for some of thenostrums operating today in schools to fostermulticulturalism. He has a particular dislike ofBlack History Month. As one of his intervieweescomments, ‘Black History Month isn’t muchabout black history’. Dash explains, Black HistoryMonth isolates black presence and makes itirrelevant, ghettoised. A few iconic figures arecelebrated but the larger hidden history of blackstruggle is neglected.Does this all mean that innovation incurriculum and meaningful pupil experience arecondemned to waste? Far from it. Dash makes thecase for African Caribbean students as therepresentatives of a new form of hybrid, creolisedculture. ‘They are living exemplars of ourpost-modern state’. As such they may make workin the art classroom which is outside teachers’cultural experiences, but, Dash argues, it is in anissues-based pedagogy that future progress forthe African Caribbean student lies. The authorsuggests that the black body represents for suchstudents a unique and potent source of expressivepossibilities. Whether it be in forms of walking,clothing or hair styling, new syncretic formsenable young people to create new expressivestyles that are decidedly aesthetic, fun and seriousmarkers of identity.The ‘absence of ruins’ provides cultural spacefor new art forms, whether it be the historicinventions encapsulated in Maroon combsdesigns, the Caribbean Surrealists, Lam andGreaves, the Caribbean Artists’ Movement of1966-1972, or the abstraction of Frank Bowling’spaintings celebrated in Rasheed Areen’s splendidexhibition catalogue entitled The Other Story.There is now, Dash reminds us, a vibrant recentart history for pupils to explore, interrogate andeven emulate. INIVA and Autograph provide avery valuable and accessible entry tocontemporary art such as the photography ofIngrid Pollard, the painting of Sonya Boyce andGavin Jantjes and the barbershop art of FaisalAbdu’ Allah. Despite the restrictive culture of theexamination syllabuses, there is a world of newartistic practice available for pupils to explore inthe classroom. And, Dash reminds us, there areboth MA and higher degree programmes now forteachers to engage with to help them deliver apedagogy that respects and promotes art relevantto the African Caribbean pupil, and incidentally,to all of us involved in exploring a postmoderncurriculum.This an excellent and challenging account andanalysis. I hope that, when reprinted, thepublishers will attend to better illustrations andan index.Nick Stanley, Research Fellow,Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas,The British Museum