Abstract

This book traces the main gendered themes of modernist art education from the nineteenth century to the present day. In the period of industrial modernization, art education emphasised the importance of productive modes of creativity in 'making and doing' and promoted rational 'design processes' productive of masculine identities. With the decline of industrial production and with the rise in leisure, services and consumption, art education has shifted its relevance to the more feminine skills of flexibility, management, responsiveness and combinatory modes of creativity. The Gendering of Art Education looks at the way art education has always been implicated in producing gendered identities for modernity's gendered divisions of labour.