How do you define craft? Like defining contemporary art, defining craft is the least interesting part of the conversation. However, the definition of craft that I have found most useful combines the words of several scholars and artists: craft is the skilled and thoughtful act of process and/or material-oriented making. 

Throughout the 20th century, museums, historians, and curators struggled with what to do with craft and, at several points, moved away from celebrating artisans and simply tucked craft into the belly of fine arts. Craft’s inability to find a home in the art world may be the reason it has been attractive to activists. We can look to contemporary craft artists, like those in the playlist below. 

While watching these or any film about contemporary art, consider finding the craft through these questions:  

How does the artist orient themselves to the material?
What lineage are they a part of?
Where do they show care? 

Contemporary artists are the most adept at breaking boxes and revel in defying and challenging limitations and restraints. 

Read more about Makda’s exploration into the definition of craft.

This past year, I had students investigate their creative strategies and learn pedagogy; yes—pedagogy! When I entered this past school year, I was convinced that students just needed to know “the why” behind art education decision-making and then they would engage with art more.

This Playlist highlights my students’ favorite artists who have taught them that to be an artist is more expansive than we originally think. These artists use art to act, think, play, dream, live, fight, discuss, and just ‘be’ in the world.

Read about how Kandice teaches with this playlist in the classroom.

This playlist is meant to bridge the gaps between past and present. The essential questions explored over the course of the AP Art History curriculum are standard, but the expectation is for students to respond critically, think uniquely, and stay open-minded while finding points of connection. When I ask students to make personal connections with artists from the past, I encourage them to look at the message, material, or experience of the artist. By using contemporary artist videos, like Cindy Sherman’s, students can understand that artists continue legacies of connection. Sherman’s thoughts on how we become characters for stories that inspire the creation of identity for developing nations can be easily connected to mythology from Ancient Greece when studying the Parthenon and the Great Altar of Zeus and Athena at Pergamon. Another example is when I aim to have students understand the fluid relationship between artist, text, and visual during the Medieval times when illuminated manuscripts became popular. I have students listen to Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s account on how she learned to talk back to text, while showing students their own relationship with books, writing, and note-taking. 

My goal is for students to not get caught up in a succession of memorization, but rather, I ask them to understand that art is a living engagement with life that everyone (old, young, rich, or poor) from the past and present shares as a universal bond. 

Other points of engagement:

Personally Connecting with the Past (Prehistory Unit) — Song Dong: 生 / Shēng
Why do artists examine the past? What can aspects of long ago tell us about today?

Colonization (Ancient Mediterranean Unit) — Michael Rakowitz: Haunting the West
What are the ways people have subverted the imperialist role of museums, interrogated the value we place on objects over people, and created ongoing systems for repair and accountability? 

The Value of Writing (Medieval Manuscripts – Medieval Unit) — Kameelah Janan Rasheed: The Edge of Legibility
What are the ways we talk back to a text, events, or artworks?

Characters (Ancient Greece/Rome Unit) — Cindy Sherman: Characters
What can we learn about the memorable characters of our past and their complex lives?

Continuous Narrative (Ancient Egypt Unit) — Kara Walker in “Stories”
How do artists use storytelling conventions when sharing stories? 

Emotion and Drama (Romanticism – Art Period Movements Unit) — John Akomfrah in “London”
Which global legacies connect our past with our present personalities?

Storytelling, Poetry. SPIRITUALITY (Southeast Asia Unit) — Xu Bing in “Bejing”
What can we learn from language, cultural tradition, and the lessons of our past that point to the possibilities of our future?

Lineage (Indigenous Unit) — Tanya Aguiñiga: Crafting Lineage
How do tradition and lineage inform our cultural identities?

Read about how Kandice teaches with this playlist in the classroom.