When cultures meet, stuff happens

The Artdog Image of Interest 

This week's Image of Interest is The Japanese Parisian, painted by the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens in 1872. It was painted during a time period when Europe had begun trading with a newly-opened Japan (the Meiji Era), and many European artists, intellectuals and elites were seized with a deep fascination with Japanese art and culture.

Japonisme, as this fascination was called, influenced many aspects of European culture and arts. It inspired and revolutionized the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Gaugin, and Whistler, as well as the Art Nouveau movement.

The allure of the exotic, the fascination with other cultures and their arts, is a human reaction we've seen in many times and places. But when is it a healthy cultural exchange, and when is it cultural appropriation?

I plan to spend some time this month looking at that and related questions, as we move toward Halloween, the Days of the Dead, and all the opportunities to explore other cultures--or cross inappropriate lines--that abound at this time of year.

OUR IMAGE: Many thanks to Mimi Matthews for a very nice image of one of Alfred Stevens's more famous paintings.

How Inclusion Looks: Artdog Image of Interest

My series on social justice continues. To me, Black History Month and Women's History Month should go on all year long, but in special recognition of both (for February and March) I've been celebrating Social Justice Awareness. My focus is on inclusiveness, acceptance, and the challenge of reveling in our diversity.

How are your circles drawn?

Anyone who's been paying attention has probably noticed the many ways in which diversity can strengthen communities. 

Whether we are talking about a biome that resists decimation by disease more readily, a balanced stock portfolio, or a country strengthened by immigrant inflow (yes, America, I'm talking to YOU!), acceptance, inclusion, and cultural exchange makes us stronger, better, and wiser.

Cultural exchange is one area where creative people in the arts play a cutting-edge role. In our interactions, and in the cultural cross-pollination of our art-forms interacting with those of others, we form some of the first bridges to understanding between people. It's just one of the important things artists do, but it is a very important part of why the world needs art.

IMAGE: I found this image on Facebook, but missed getting the source (Sorry! lapse in judgement; after much searching, I haven't found it again, so that's my bad). According to TinEye, the earliest posting of it seems to have been on Friendship Circle, a special needs resources website's Parenting blog. Wherever it originated, I think it paints the picture well.

School Choice—Who’d ‘a’ Thought?

I’ve always been highly dubious about so-called “school choice” initiatives, because they usually take the form of a voucher system to use public money for private schools.

I always figured these had the not-very-secret agenda of glomming onto tax dollars, to publicly fund either white flight from racially integrated schools, or evangelical flight from the teaching of evolution and sex ed. I don’t hold with any of that.

But recently I stumbled on a different understanding of “school choice,” and “market forces,” as well. Teaching professionals tend to cringe when laypeople talk about “market forces” in education, because in many ways it’s an inappropriate approach. Neither term has been on my “favorites” list, but events beyond my control may be changing that.

For all my belief in free public education as the bedrock of American democracy, I also have been increasingly critical of the way the “education-industrial complex” runs schools, these days. I want to find alternative ways that seem more rational, nurturing, and effective than the way it's usually done.

My “aha” moment came when I realized that in the time I’ve been an adult we’ve seen:

• the emergence of special education mandates
  
• the homeschooling movement
  
• the “small schools” movement
  
• multiculturalism
• magnet schools
  
• a huge influx of English language learners into our schools
  
• the rise of charter schools
  
• a boom in computer-based “distance learning” that I predict is only warming up.

Talk about “school choice!” When I was a kid the only alternatives were public or private—but whichever you chose, school was run just about the same, and if you didn't fit in, too bad.

But now, in very real ways, market forces are remaking schools with startling variety.

The thing is, I think we’re still a long way from what school will eventually look like. When all the experiments have shaken down and been evaluated over time, I think those who remember today will be amazed at what all changed.

For me, that’s a really exciting thought. I think we still have a lot of changing to do.