Genealogies, Family Resemblances, and Ideations: Art Education’s Place of Possibility in the 21st Century

Manuel Barkan’s A Foundation for Art Education is close to six decades old. Contained within Barkan’s text are numerous ideas that resemble innovative ideas in education today. Using A Foundation juxtaposed with the report by Mizuko Ito et al., Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design, the author of this essay presents a number of—what Wittgenstein termed—family resemblances to illustrate that the field of art education has a history of innovative ideas that should empower art educators to be leaders in the larger discourses of education.