Understanding the Cultural Meaning of Selected African Ndop Statues: The Use of Art History Constructivist Inquiry Methods

Dis/locating Comfort Women Statues: Reflections on Colonialism and Implications for Global Art Education Critical Multicultural Art Education

“…As for practical applications, art teachers can include comfort women statues as a form of memorial art in their curricula. In the field of art education, memorial art and its pedagogical implications have been discussed through the analysis of monuments (Blandy, 2008;Buffington, 2017;Chanda & Basinger, 2000) and non-monumental art as a memorial site (Darts, Tavin, Sweeny & Derby, 2008). In these discussions, art educators' emphasis on the role of memorial art in attending to untold history and voices seems to be the case for comfort women statues.…”

Teaching and Cultural Domination: Re-Examining Trajectories of Traditional African Sculpture through Critique

“…Even if credible efforts were made to showcase the indigenous arts of Africa, in many regards Western historical methodologies are not applicable to understanding or charting their evolution. One might, for example, face significant difficulties when attempting to adapt to new frameworks or historical African oral traditions (Delange, 1974;Chanda & Basinger, 2000). In some instances, not even indigenous people are expected to take in the full meaning and function of an object at once.…”

“…In some instances, not even indigenous people are expected to take in the full meaning and function of an object at once. Most of these works are to be grasped in stages over time, depending not only on one's relationship to one's particular community, one's spiritual enlightenment, and the context in which the object is viewed or used, but also on one's maturity and status in one's society (Ani, 1994;Chanda & Basinger, 2000;Nashon et al, 2007).…”

“…During this transition, works produced based on the influences of African aesthetic foundations, in some cases, supported the colonizers' paradigm and sustained misconceptions, racial stereotypes, and parochial views. Without regard for the political context from which these works re-emerged (their discovery), their purpose and significance became a historical and cultural distortion (Chanda & Basinger, 2000), but even this distortion yielded unique artistic trajectories in the West for modernists and for artists of African descent.…”

“…Since westerners began to 'establish scholarship' on the subject of African art, their Europeanbased cultural perspectives only analyzed the physical characteristics of African art and neglected to consider its purpose and function (Chanda & Basinger, 2000). British scholars protested that Africans were not capable of producing 'great art' and that all Africans could aspire to was craftsmanship (MacClancy, 1997).…”