Asia Art Archive (AAA) releases video recordings from the Art Schools of Asia Symposium, available for free on AAA’s website and YouTube channel.
The Art Schools of Asia Symposium culminates a monthly seminar series conducted in 2021–22 with a cohort of eighteen emerging scholars from around the world. The online event took place over six days, between May 31 to June 10, 2022, and featured presentations by the cohort, along with interventions by renowned scholars. Together, the panels and discussions highlighted the contribution of art schools and art education to the development of modern and contemporary art across the region and beyond—considering topics such as the relation of schools to the nation-state, the development of media such as prints, the connection to artistic institutions and associations, and the place of experimentation. They also teased out some of the broader methodological and theoretical implications that thinking about schools and education have for the writing of histories of art and institutions more broadly.
The video recordings are a valuable resource for investigating existing scholarship and specific case studies on art pedagogy. Please see below for links to the sessions.
Instruments of Instruction
Deepti Mulgund, “School and Beyond: Drawing Pedagogy in Nineteenth-Century Industrial Capitalism and Empire”; Santhosh Sakhinala, “Art Institutions and Pedagogy in Twentieth-Century Hyderabad”. Followed by a conversation on Santiniketan and a response by R. Siva Kumar & Sanjukta Sunderason. Moderated by Noopur Desai.
Schools between Society and the State
Dipti Sherchan, “Art of Nation-Building: Cultural Politics of State-Sponsored Art Institutions in Nepal”; Chabib Duta Hapsoro, “State-Commissioned Art under Depoliticised Cultural Policy: A Case Study of Decenta in the New Order”; Yuliya Sorokina, “Astral Nomads: Art of Post-Soviet Asia in the Flow of Time and Meanings”. Followed by a presentation and response by Amanda Rath. Moderated by Chương-Đài Võ.
Experiments in Education
Katherine Bruhn, “‘Nature Acts as Our Teacher’: Art Making in and by Artists in Minangkabau”; Minh Nguyen, “School of Thought: Language-Based Pedagogy in Contemporary Vietnam”; Shanshan Chen, “The Vanguard Class: A Case Study of the First Experimental Art Education Programme in China”. Followed by a presentation and response by Lily Chumley. Moderated by John Tain.
Learning Inside Out
Alice Ashiwa, “Formation and Transformation of Post-World War II Avant-Garde Art through the Sogetsu Art Center”; Vera Mey, “Artistic Alignment: Pagoda Muralists and Alternative Pedagogies in Modern Cambodia”; Sooyoung Leam, “Sites of Un/learning: Art Education and Cultural Centres in Cold War Korea”. Followed by a conversation and discussion with Clare Harris and Tsewang Tashi. Moderated by Congyang Xie.
Printmaking and Pedagogy
Gemma Sharpe, “Printmaking in Pakistan”; Kiko del Rosario, “Registers of Relief”; Elizabeth Emrich-Rougé, “Woodblock Print Artists and the Academy: New Perspectives on Printmaking in 1930s China”. Followed by a presentation and response by Salima Hashmi. Moderated by Sneha Ragavan.
Teaching in Transition
Yiqing Li, “Passion, Hope, and Anxiety: Modern Art Schools and Politics in Early Twentieth-Century China”; Zohreen Murtaza and Amina Ejaz, “Decolonisation and Nationalism? From Mayo School of Arts to National College of Arts”; Vishal Khandelwal, “Documentation as Design: Photography at the NID”. Followed by a presentation and response by Zheng Shengtian. Moderated by Anthony Yung.
Art Schools of Asia grew from AAA’s long-term interest in pedagogy as a site where modern and contemporary art histories of the region have been written. View videos of AAA’s previous projects and programmes on pedagogy here.
Asia Art Archive is an independent non-profit organisation initiated in 2000 in response to the urgent need to document and make accessible the multiple recent histories of art in the region. With one of the most valuable collections of material on art freely available from its website and onsite library, AAA builds tools and communities to collectively expand knowledge through research, residency, and educational programmes.
*Image above: Photograph of students at the Department of Applied Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Jyoti Bhatt Archive, AAA Collections.
