Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Artists-in-school'

<p> The scope of this thesis is to examine the potential benefits artists-in-residence offer students in community based after-school art programs. This thesis looks at two artists-in-residence who participated in the same after school program in southeast Washington, D.C., between the years of 2011 and 2013. The ArtReach After School program was developed by the Corcoran Gallery of Art's community education department and serves as the basis for research contained herein. Research focuses on the ways artists' residencies benefit youth and adolescents through aiding in the development of life skills. Data was collected through personal interviews with the resident artists, program directors, and students who participated in the residency. Researchers also observed interactions between students and resident artists on field trips and classroom observations. Based on the widely accepted theories of developmental psychologists Erik Erikson and Howard Gardner, it was found that artist residencies do nurture experiences that aid in the development of life skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and peer-interaction in youth and adolescent learners. After-school art programs provide an environment suited for embracing these skills that are commonly outweighed by the need to raise test scores in traditional public schools. This thesis explores the potential of one after-school art program that has successfully implemented an artist residency program.</p>

<p> This mixed methodology study investigated the arts integration practices of music teaching artists participating in four selected elementary school arts integration projects in the United States. This study also explored the possibility that music teaching artists&rsquo; formal education, arts integration training and professional development, and their own attitudes as well as different stakeholders&rsquo; attitudes about arts integration and music education impacted their arts integration practices. The explanatory two-phase design of this study began with the collection and analysis of quantitative data and was followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data, thus connecting the results from the former to those from the latter. The quantitative data provided information for purposefully selecting the interview participants who provided the qualitative data collection in phase two.</p><p> The data gathered in this study indicate that the music teaching artists shared similar beliefs about arts integration but that they believed their school leaders&rsquo; goals and objectives differed from their own. The data also provided evidence for concluding that the music teaching artists believe that the most successful arts integration projects are those that are collaborative partnerships between an arts specialist or classroom teacher and a teaching artist. A unexpected finding in this study was the teaching and exploration of <i>sound</i> in arts integration projects team taught between a sound teaching artist,&ndash;some without musical backgrounds or formal training&ndash;a music teaching artist, and a classroom teacher.</p><p> The statistical analysis in this study regarding the degree to which formal education, arts integration professional development and training, music teaching artists&rsquo; attitudes about arts integration, and the beliefs held by music teaching artists regarding school leaders&rsquo; and their arts organization&rsquo;s administrators&rsquo; attitudes about arts integration were predictors of the arts integration practices as self-reported by music teaching artists produced results that were non-significant.</p><p> The content analysis of curriculum documents and student products submitted by the study participants revealed information to support the findings from the interview and survey data.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008.<br>Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 23, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 214-232).

Lilian Westcott Hale (1880-1963) and her daughter Nancy Hale (1908-1988) built successful careers during a period of transition in America, as Victorian mores were replaced by new modern freedoms. Greater independence for women had evolved during the preceding century, before the influential cultural factors which occurred during the early twentieth century like urbanization and world war. This interdisciplinary analysis of Lilian Hale‘s artwork and Nancy Hale‘s writings demonstrates the imprint of the surrounding world on their work. Lilian Hale‘s art is influenced by her Victorian childhood, and Nancy Hale‘s fiction reveals many conflicts of the modern era. The study of these two women is enhanced by the wealth of primary documentation connecting their ideas and their lives to their artistic works. Both of the women ranked among the most respected in their fields during their lifetimes. Their works resonate with elements of their eras, demonstrating what it was to be a woman during the first half of the twentieth century. Lilian Westcott Hale and Nancy Hale both engage the gender constructs of their periods through their work. Lilian Westcott Hale‘s art is divided here into three distinct genres: her still lifes and landscapes express the confining environment the Victorian woman occupied; her idealized women reflect the period‘s taste for female perfection and beauty; her portraits and figure studies point to Hale‘s own distinction between males and females through their clothing and their poses. Unlike Lilian Westcott Hale, Nancy Hale demonstrates woman‘s new freedoms in an open manner, a result of the break with Victorianism. Hale‘s use of a literary medium allows her direct examination of the turmoil caused by the modern breakdown of Victorian structures. Lilian Westcott Hale refrains from harsh judgment of her daughter‘s world, while Nancy Hale‘s modern challenge of the previous era‘s standards leads her into troubling relationships and difficulties balancing her career with her personal life. Their work reveals the cultural ideologies of their respective eras and particularly the changes taking place for women.

<p> This is a case study that focuses on the socio-cultural and historical contexts that influenced the studio art practice of three Post-80s Generation student artists attending the Chinese Art School in Beijing. This study is grounded on the idea that the creation of art is determined by an interplay between multiple factors within the milieu (of what makes it understood to be &ldquo;art&rdquo; by the majority) and their influence on the artistic creation, which is non-assertive and invariably established in relation to others that happen to share and coexist within this processual context of doing and learning art making. On the other hand, the notion of a <i> context</i> in this study refers to a notion of &ldquo;genealogies&rdquo; where contexts are distanced from descriptions based on a horizontal platform or a lineal chain of events. Rather, in line with the methods that emerge from arts research and practice, this project operates on a &ldquo;messy&rdquo; yet sensible horizon of interconnections that transcend fixed notions of time and space.</p><p> While sixteen participants took part in data collection, the main focus is reserved to three student-artists. Data collection was conducted in the month of June in 2010 and 2011. Interviews and studio visits were the two methods applied for data collection. Data or narratives collected from the three research participants pertaining to the development of their studio art practices provided three avenues of interpretation: first, through the students&rsquo; own idiosyncratic accounts of their work and their student experience; secondly, through the lens of art as a collective entity from both the perspective of the participants and the researcher; and last, through a summative analysis, offering a number of possible explanations.</p><p> Through an analysis of the students&rsquo; artistic production and their art educational experience, this study aims at offering art educators, both within as well as outside China, with a discussion that illustrates the history and the stories of the Post-80s Generation student artists in the Chinese Art School.</p>

This study presents Aboriginal artists' perspectives on the study of Native art in the school curriculum. The case study is a naturalistic inquiry that employs ethnographic techniques to interview nine Saskatchewan artists, five females and four males. Overall, the artists agree on having Native art content in school programs, especially for Native students. All the artists believe that Aboriginal peoples should be involved in the definition and presentation of their art in the school curriculum. The artists show that content, and materials, may or may not be traditional. The artists prefer an observing and modelling approach to teaching bead and leather work, and to teaching drawing and painting. The male artists, primarily, support a research approach for studying the vast, diverse, and complex art of indigenous peoples. As well as learning about the art, the artists stress learning from the art including history, ecology, and about art from a non-Western perspective. The words, stories, and views of all the artists emphasize that art is a dynamic part of Aboriginal peoples' lives and cultures; one which they are willing to explain and share. Native art is a rich resource for school curriculum. It is a resource that must be and can be shaped by Aboriginal peoples.<br>Education, Faculty of<br>Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of<br>Graduate

<p> Latino English learners (ELs), among the largest student population in the United States K-12 school system, continue to lag behind their English-proficient peers. They also tend to attend segregated schools, have less-qualified teachers, and lack access to rigorous curriculum, including the arts. Museum education departments have increasingly sought to fill the gap in arts education for underserved populations. This mixed methods study explored the degree to which teaching artists (TAs) from a large metropolitan museum are effectively addressing the art education needs of Latino ELs. The dissertation study occured in two phases. Phase 1 included quantitative analysis of observations of the TAs using the numeric components and ancedotal evidence of the Observation Protocol for Academic Literacies. Phase 2 consisted of semi-structured interviews with the participants. Findings of the study indicate that while TAs can improve instruction in terms of providing materials of students&rsquo; native langauge and providing opportunities to transfer skills between their primary and the target language, they nevertheless use numerous strategies for effective English language instruction. This can inform museum education departments on effective teaching practices of ELs, an area of study that has almost no scholarship.</p><p>

In the shift to a globalised creative economy where innovation and creativity are increasingly prized, many studies have documented direct and indirect social and economic benefits of the arts. In addition, arts workers have been argued to possess capabilities which are of great benefit both within and outside the arts, including (in addition to creativity) problem solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and team working skills (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2007). However, the labour force characteristics of professional artists in Australia and elsewhere belie their importance. The average earnings of workers in the arts sector are consistently less than other workers with similar educational backgrounds, and their rates of unemployment and underemployment are much higher (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005; Caves, 2000; Throsby & Hollister, 2003). Graduating students in the arts appear to experience similar employment challenges and exhibit similar patterns of work to artists in general. Many eventually obtain work unrelated to the arts or go back to university to complete further tertiary study in fields unrelated to arts (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2005a). Recent developments in career development theory have involved discussion of the rise of boundaryless careers amongst knowledge workers. Boundaryless careers are characterised by non-linear career progression occurring outside the bounds of a single organisation or field (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996a, 1996b). The protean career is an extreme form of the boundaryless career, where the careerist also possesses strong internal career motivations and criteria for success (Baruch, 2004; Hall, 2004; Hall & Mirvis, 1996). It involves a psychological contract with one's self rather than an organisation or organisations. The boundaryless and protean career literature suggests competencies and dispositions for career self-management and career success, but to date there has been minimal empirical work investigating the predictive value of these competencies and dispositions to career success in the boundaryless or protean career. This program of research employed competencies and dispositions from boundaryless and protean career theory to predict career success in professional artists and tertiary arts graduates. These competencies and dispositions were placed into context using individual and contextual career development influences suggested by the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a). Four substantive studies were conducted, using online surveys with professional artists and tertiary arts students / graduates, which were preceded by a pilot study for measure development. A largely quantitative approach to the program of research was preferred, in the interests of generalisability of findings. However, at the time of data collection, there were no quantitative measures available which addressed the constructs of interest. Brief scales of Career Management Competence based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (Haines, Scott, & Lincoln, 2003), Protean Career Success Orientation based on the underlying dispositions for career success suggested by protean career theory, and Career Development Influences based on the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a) were constructed and validated via a process of pilot testing and exploratory factor analyses. This process was followed by confirmatory factor analyses with data collected from two samples: 310 professional artists, and 218 graduating arts students who participated at time 1 (i.e., at the point of undergraduate course completion in October, 2005). Confirmatory factor analyses via Structural Equation Modelling conducted in Study 1 revealed that the scales would benefit from some respecification, and so modifications were made to the measures to enhance their validity and reliability. The three scales modified and validated in Study 1 were then used in Studies 3 and 4 as potential predictors of career success for the two groups of artists under investigation, along with relevant sociodemographic variables. The aim of the Study 2 was to explore the construct of career success in the two groups of artists studied. Each participant responded to an open-ended question asking them to define career success. The responses for professional artists were content analysed using emergent coding with two coders. The codebook was later applied to the arts students' definitions. The majority of the themes could be grouped into four main categories: internal definitions; financial recognition definitions; contribution definitions; and non-financial recognition definitions. Only one third of the definition themes in the professional artists' and arts graduates' definitions of career success were categorised as relating to financial recognition. Responses within the financial recognition category also indicated that many of the artists aspired only to a regular subsistence level of arts income (although a small number of the arts graduates did aspire to fame and fortune). The second section of the study investigated the statistical relationships between the five different measures of career success for each career success definitional category and overall. The professional artists' and arts graduates' surveys contained several measures of career success, including total earnings over the previous 12 months, arts earnings over the previous 12 months, 1-6 self-rated total employability, 1-6 self-rated arts employability, and 1-6 self-rated self-defined career success. All of the measures were found to be statistically related to one another, but a very strong statistical relationship was identified between each employability measure and its corresponding earnings measure for both of the samples. Consequently, it was decided to include only the earnings measures (earnings from arts, and earnings overall) and the self-defined career success rating measure in the later studies. Study 3 used the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via Classification and Regression Tree (CART - Breiman, Friedman, Olshen, & Stone, 1984) style decision trees with v-fold crossvalidation pruning using the 1 SE rule. CART decision trees are a nonparametric analysis technique which can be used as an alternative to OLS or hierarchical regression in the case of data which violates parametric statistical assumptions. The three optimal decision trees for total earnings, arts earnings and self defined career success ratings explained a large proportion of the variance in their respective target variables (R2 between 0.49 and 0.68). The Career building subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, pertaining to the ability to manage the external aspects of a career, was the most consistent predictor of all three career success measures (and was the strongest predictor for two of the three trees), indicating the importance of the artists' abilities to secure work and build the external aspects of a career. Other important predictors included the Self management subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, Protean Career Success Orientation, length of time working in the arts, and the positive role of interpersonal influences, skills and abilities, and interests and beliefs from the Career Development Influences scale. Slightly different patterns of predictors were found for the three different career success measures. Study 4 also involved the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via CART style decision trees. This study used a prospective repeated measures design where the data for the attribute variables were gathered at the point of undergraduate course completion, and the target variables were measured one year later. Data from a total of 122 arts students were used, as 122 of the 218 students who responded to the survey at time 1 (October 2005) also responded at time 2 (October 2006). The resulting optimal decision trees had R2 values of between 0.33 and 0.46. The values were lower than those for the professional artists' decision trees, and the trees themselves were smaller, but the R2 values nonetheless indicated that the arts students' trees possessed satisfactory explanatory power. The arts graduates' Career building scores at time 1 were strongly predictive of all three career success measures at time 2, a similar finding to the professional artists' trees. A further similarity between the trees for the two samples was the strong statistical relationship between Career building, Self management, and Protean Career Success Orientation. However, the most important variable in the total earnings tree was arts discipline category. Technical / design arts graduates consistently earned more overall than arts graduates from other disciplines. Other key predictors in the arts graduates' trees were work experience in arts prior to course completion, positive interpersonal influences, and the positive influence of skills and abilities and interests and beliefs on career development. The research program findings represent significant contributions to existing knowledge about artists' career development and success, and also the transition from higher education to the world of work, with specific reference to arts and creative industries programs. It also has implications for theory relating to career success and protean / boundaryless careers.

This thesis describes the street art culture of Chile and its power in art education. The thesis highlights the didactic questions what, how and why. With the Swedish art curriculum in upper secondary education (Skolverket, 2011) as a starting point, the following research examines what topics street artists in Chile address in their work; and how and how can educators in Sweden use street art in the classroom when they wish to highlight topics such as communication, identity and democracy, and with what purpose. The implementation of the study is based on a method of qualitative research. Semi structured- as well as informal interviews are used. Observation in form of visual field notes is presented through photography. This results in four different themes that is highlighted. The themes are cultural heritage, artivism and democracy, identity and school. The conclusion regarding what benefits street art may serve in school are that Swedish teachers in upper secondary art education can benefit from using street art in the art classroom when they wish to highlight the communicative aspects of street art. Another conclusion being made is that Chilean street artists use street art as a communicative tool when they wish to highlight topics such as cultural heritage, political views and as an identity marker.

Ce travail de recherches dans divers centres d‟archives (Paris, Nantes, Bucarest, Genève) réalise une synthèse des relations culturelles franco-roumaines de 1878 à 1965. Il s‟agit de comprendre, comment la France affaiblie après 1870 est plus que jamais considérée par l‟élite roumaine comme sa « grande soeur latine ». Puis, forte de cette reconnaissance, comment elle institutionnalise sa propagande culturelle dans la Grande Roumanie (1919-1939) pour oeuvrer aux côtés des Roumains à la latinisation des territoires annexés, et parvient à la signature de l‟accord culturel de mars 1939 dans l‟environnement hostile des régimes fasciste et nazi. La dernière période de 1940 à 1965 traite des aléas de ces relations : maintien difficile des OEuvres françaises durant la guerre, renouveau espéré des échanges de 1944 à 1947, jusqu‟à la dénonciation de l‟accord en 1948 par la Roumanie sous tutelle soviétique. Suit une traversée du désert qui aboutit avec peine au nouvel accord de 1965. Tout au long de cette période, la culture française s‟enrichie au contact des intellectuels et artistes roumains dont les oeuvres entrent dans le patrimoine français. L‟auteure de la thèse fait découvrir son trisaïeul roumain, le peintre Mihai Simonidi (1872-1933), à partir des archives familiales. Arrivé en France en 1892, il acquiert une certaine renommée auprès du Tout-Paris à l‟occasion de l‟Exposition Universelle de 1900 ainsi qu‟auprès de l‟élite bucarestoise. Peintre de nus, de marines et de fresques magistrales dont certaines décorent encore l‟intérieur de bâtiments bucarestois, il réalise également des portraits de célébrités françaises du monde artistique et littéraire et de politiques roumains<br>This study of Franco-Rumanian cultural relations between 1878 and 1965 is the fruit of research carried out in a number of archive centres (Paris, Nantes, Bucharest and Geneva). Its objective is to understand why France, in its weakened state after the 1870 war, was nevertheless considered by the Romanian elite as its „older sister‟. The author then examines how France used its position to institutionalise its cultural propaganda in „Grand Romania‟ (1919-1939), working alongside Romanians to spread its influence to the annexed territories, and how a cultural agreement was signed in March 1939 despite the hostile environment created by the fascist and Nazi regimes. Relations were unsettled during the final period (1940 to 1965), with the struggle to retain French works of art during the war, the promising exchanges in the immediate after-war years, and the termination of the agreement in 1948 by Soviet-controlled Romania. After a barren period a new agreement was signed in 1965. Throughout the period French culture was enriched by its contact with Romanian intellectuals and artists whose works were integrated into France‟s cultural heritage. The author uses family records to tell the story of her Romanian ancestor, the artist Mihai Simonidi (1872-1933). After arriving in France in 1892, he exhibited at the Universal Exhibition of 1900 and gained a certain reputation amongst the Paris and Bucharest elite. Well-known for his nudes, marine scenes and murals, some of which can still be seen in buildings in Bucharest, he also painted the portraits of famous French artists and writers and Romanian politicians of the time

碩士<br>國立臺灣師範大學<br>美術學系<br>94<br>The purposes of this study are to investigate the establishment of the partnership within “artists-in-schools,” which include the process of forming the partnership, the exploration of the relationship and interaction wihtin the partners, and the analysis of factors influencing the partnerships. This study was carried out by the case study approach, and the object of study was Lishan Primary School. The duration of this study is from September, 2005 to June, 2006, and the collection of research data proceeds by approaches such as observations, interviews, and document analysis. This study was found that: (1) The motivation to establish the partnerships is based on being mutually beneficial and human sympathy. (2) The process of establishing “artists-in-schools” is step by step. (3) The relationship between the administrative levels is like “a tug of war”. (4) The relationship between the executive levels depends on the education program. (5) The common goal between partners, the extent of involvement, and the maintenance of friendship are key factors that affect the development of relationship between partners. According to the results, this study was suggested that (1) the administrative level should take the responsibility to the team, create equal rights, confirm the goal, develop a long term partnerships, and focus on students’ learning. (2) The executive level ought to rethink the role of artists and teachers, make the cooperation between artists and teachers more closely. (3) The government should set up a special project and provide budget to support “artists-in-schools”. Train up teaching artists, give them license, and create a database.This study also provided some suggestions for conducting future studies.

Master of Arts in Fine Arts - Fine Arts<br>A Community Partnership Art Event, resulting from curating and facilitating an educational collaboration was held on the 23 March 2004, ten years into South Africa’s democracy. Through a Masters in Fine Arts coursework entitled “Creating, Curating and Critiquing” offered at the University of Witwatersrand, I attempted to test the boundaries of the Arts and Culture Learning Area and explore alternatives to the current definition of “outreach”. The grade six learners from The Ridge School, an independent boys’ preparatory school and Salvazione Christian School, an assisted government school, were brought together over a period of ten weeks during regular school art lessons. Through the guidance and expertise of various artists, workshops were cocoordinated with the collaborative ideas of the learners coming to the fore. The process and dialogue established between learners, artists and educators was intended to shift my own parameters of teaching primary school art. Focusing on people rather than the final products points to a readiness to view knowledge not as a commodity owned b#31;#31;the expert teacher, but rather as something which can be constructed and developed with the learners. Originally the collaboration was intended as a celebration of the opening of new premises for Salvazione Christian School. The public art happening was held in a tent next to the informal settlement where a large majority of the children from Salvazione Christian School live. 3 Rather than what might be described as a modernist approach to art education, where the focus seems to be on the artist and artwork, the focus was on linking art to social interaction, and it was through the discovery of a form of hybridity that a number of differences between the two communities were challenged and exposed. This resulted in an approach that seems similar to the manner in which the Indian writer, Salman Rushdie writes of hybridity: “Hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.” (Coombes, 2000:39) Through this hybridity tensions were created and explored rather than a ‘rainbow’ or melting pot created, where differences are glossed over as in a multicultural approach. The primary research methodology was participant observation in which directly observed data was analyzed and interpreted. Data was gathered from the interactions in the workshops, setting up the exhibition and the art event. As intended, a link between art and ‘outreach’ was established. In order for this link to change into a community partnership, it must be seen as part of a much longer process. The process as a whole did become a different kind of primary school art space, preparing the way for possible positive transformation of the visual arts in the arts and culture learning area at primary school level.

Bibliography: leaves 537-561<br>xxi, 561 leaves : ill ; 31 cm.<br>Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.<br>Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Education, 1993?

This thesis addresses a gap in research regarding South Australian china painting. Although china painting has been practised in Australia for the last 120 years and is held in major Australian collections, it has been little researched and then in a minor role associated with ceramics and studio potters, or as women’s art/craft. The china painters too, have been little researched. My research identifies the three ‘highs’ of the changing fortunes of china painting, and how the practice survived in between. I argue that it was first taught in the city’s School of Design, Painting and Technical Art in 1894 as a skill for possible industrial employment, due to the initiative of School Principal, Harry Pelling Gill. However china painting classes were discontinued by 1897 due to an economic depression and the fact that the anticipated industry did not eventuate. In 1906 china painting classes were reinstituted in the (re-named) Adelaide School of Art and teacher Laurence Howie was pivotal in that revival. China painting classes ceased during the First World War while Howie served overseas in the Australian Forces, but resumed in 1923 after his return and appointment as Principal of the (renamed) School of Arts and Crafts. The resulting change in the fortunes of china painting was the outcome of the School’s appropriate training in art and design, and I argue this enabled emerging professional female artists to confidently exhibit china painting alongside their fine art. I will devote a chapter to the important role of the South Australian Society of Arts in facilitating this important public exposure of china painting. The Second World War marked a decline in popularity of china painting. Chapter 5 traces its survival till it burst into popularity again in 1965. Further chapters describe china painting’s following meteoric rise in fortune and the role played by the South Australian teachers of the art/craft, few of whom had received formal art training. I argue that china painting became a conservative social craft, but nonetheless a serious hobby, pursued by married, middle-class women who strongly believed their work was art, not craft. I will point out how they were visited and influenced by entrepreneurial American teachers, politically active in the art/craft debate in the United States of America. Chapter 8 will chart the steps taken by Australian teachers in the 1980s to break from the American influence and regain an Australian identity in teachers’ organisations and iconography. I will describe the debates that ensued following experimental work exhibited by avant-garde Australian teachers to resolve the art/craft debate regarding china painting in Australia, and the difficulties of maintaining china painting momentum as the majority of practitioners became elderly women. This thesis identifies education of the practitioners as a key factor throughout South Australian china painting history as a way of better understanding the place of china painting within the decorative arts. China painting is currently in decline; nevertheless, as I will point out in my conclusion, there are several future pathways it could take. Only within recent decades have curators and writers shown an increased interest in women’s decorative arts, including china painting. It is timely to undertake research before existing documentation of china painting is lost.<br>http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1374281<br>Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2009

Focusing on Cyrene and Serima art workshops under the tutelage of Paterson and Groeber, respectively, the study acknowledges the foundational importance of Christian art (from the late 1930s up to the 1960s) in the rise of prominent first generation artists in Zimbabwe such as Mukomberanwa, Ndandarika, Khumalo, Songo, Sambo and many others. It rejects perceptions of African modernism as inauthentic imitations of artistic innovations that originated with European art. While accepting that there was a deliberate fusion of traditional art into mission mainstream education to produce Christian art forms with a strong Africanised identity, the study reveals missionaries’ conservatism and restrictions on artistic freedom. It, therefore, locates the formation of modern art in Zimbabwe largely within a broader spectrum of Africans’ encounter with colonialism or western culture which induced artists to invent new artistic expressions reflecting their own emergent political and socio-economic circumstances. The novelty and outright rejection of missionary impact are, therefore, alien to the natural synthesis that informed artistic modernism in Zimbabwe.<br>Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology<br>M.A. (Art History)