John Dewey, Albert Barnes, and the Continuity of Art and Life: Revisioning the Arts and Education

John Dewey, Albert Barnes, and the Continuity of Art and Life is a carefully-researched book offering a dynamic and expansive Deweyan vision for the arts and education by examining the influence of Barnes on Dewey.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 17 May 2023
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc

This meticulously researched book presents a dynamic and expansive Deweyan vision for the arts and education. This (re)vision acknowledges the influence on Dewey's aesthetics of art collector and educator Albert Barnes, while also exploring the various ways Dewey's writings on the arts, in moving beyond Barnes's scientific aesthetic method, were an important resource for many innovative twentieth-century American artists, art movements, and arts-related educational institutions. Neither Barnes's influence on Dewey nor the features of Dewey's naturalistic aesthetics that made his Art as Experience a favorite text of many artists and arts practitioners have been fully and adequately acknowledged in existing literature on Dewey's thinking about the arts and education. This book effectively remedies that situation.

Granger clarifies, advances, and augments a broad and open-ended 'Deweyan vision of the arts and education. Enlivened on almost every page by concrete historical and contemporary examples drawn from the arts, Granger's highly readable book is essential for democratic educators, administrators, and policymakers who reject the zombie idea that 'real academic work is inherently separate from aesthetic consummations.

—Steven Fesmire, Professor of Philosophy, Radford University; President of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy; Author of John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics

One of the most vexing characters on the American art scene was Albert Barnes: the self-styled, passionate collector whose good intentions to educate the masses ran amuck with a museum that, like his art theories, proved too rigid to be realistic. Thus, his friendship with John Dewey, whose wide application of art to life has been puzzling—until now. With Grant, we finally understand why Dewey's ideas about art and education were so important to Barnes and why they continue to resonate with artists and educators today.

Granger's book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of art, education, and philosophy. It is a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the ways in which Dewey's ideas can be applied to contemporary challenges and opportunities in the arts and education.

Weight: 369g
Dimension: 225 x 150 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781433189258
Edition number: New ed