The Maxine Greene Institute Newsletter

February 2022

Vol. 8 No. 1    

Heidi Upton, Holly Fairbank, Barbara Ellmann, Carole Saltz Editors

The Mission

The Maxine Greene Institute promotes the philosophy of Maxine Greene and the practice of aesthetic education and social imagination.

The Vision

The Institute provides community activities and a virtual space for dialogue and reflection among educators, teaching artists, scholars, students, and those interested in related philosophies and practices.

In This Issue:

• AE in the Time of COVID
• International Consortium
• Website Library Expands
• Notes from the Field
• Recent Events

Aesthetic Education in the Time of Covid

Teaching, generally speaking, is an optimistic vocation, especially when our students face adversity and continue showing up every day. We teach because we believe that with committed and compassionate nurturing and guidance, the next generation will be equipped to build successful lives in a complex and sometimes hostile world. The more adversity our students face, the more it behooves us to look past a skills-based curriculum to include ideas and materials that help them to see themselves as thinkers and creators. Fully engaged teaching is a relationship that calls for empathy and an interest in one’s students’ voices and identities.

There has been a substantial body of research documenting the essential role of caring in K-12 education. Noddings (2005) describes teaching as a “moral enterprise” (p.12) that is concerned with students’ “full human growth.” This need to account for students’ humanity does not end with high school graduation. In her book Connected Teaching (2019), Harriet Schwartz advocates for a pedagogy in which college teachers engage students in ways that “express care and convey enthusiasm” (p. 33).

Maxine Greene (2001) spoke of the power of art to heal, and the important role the arts must play in education at all levels if we truly value “wide awakeness” in our citizenry. She wrote of the social imagination, the “capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools” (1995, p. 5). That capacity moves people “to hold someone’s hand and act” (1998).

To trudge forward with old lesson plans and assessment tools suddenly makes no sense here in this space of wide awakeness.The only thing that really does make sense in this context is to bring into the center of our teaching specific works of art that act as an invitation or a provocation to help students access their voices in this time of isolation and uncertainty.

Maxine Greene often spoke and wrote of “lending a work of art one’s life” (2001, p. 128). This involves a reciprocal relationship, where one is not simply studying and cataloging the product of another person’s imagination, but engaging it in dialogue by deeply noticing, questioning, and artmaking. For Greene, to “engage imaginatively” with a work of art allows one to “discover possibilities in your own body, your own being” (2001, p. 80).

In the end, the aesthetic teaching of art opens hearts and minds through images and words designed to evoke a response. It is connection. It allows for voice when silence is everywhere. It creates community in a time of isolation as it provides the bridges to and from the self. This work supports students to develop deep connections to theme, content, and even skill but more importantly it can create opportunities for compassion, connection, and empathy.

The Maxine Greene Institute Board of Directors

References

Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on
aesthetic education. New York, NY Teachers College Press.

Greene, M. (1998). Maxine Greene addresses the topic of imagination: From the museum of
education’s readers’ guide to education exhibition. Retrieved February 5, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9pwAi8-bZE&t=2s

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change.
San Francisco, CA. Jossey Bass.

Holzer, M. (2007). Aesthetic education, inquiry, and the imagination. New York, NY, Lincoln
Center Institute for the Arts in Education.

Noddings, N. (2005). The challenge to care in schools. (2nd ed.) New York, NY. Teachers College
Press.

Schwartz, H. (2019). Connected teaching: Relationship, power, and mattering in higher
education. Sterling, VA. Stylus.

International Consortium

The Maxine Greene Institute’s International Consortium was born in 2021 in response to a growing list of individuals and communities from across the globe that have expressed interest in Maxine Greene’s work.

Over the last few years MGI has collected subscribers from forty different countries and are currently in the process of creating partnerships with communities in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany, Australia, and Canada, among other countries.

As a consequence of these initiatives and separate inquiries MGI has developed an international committee made up of MGI Board Members and Advisors in each designated country to address the collective interest of this Consortium. Our goal at MGI is to act as a clearinghouse for the exchange of ideas, a catalyst for action, and a space for dialogue between diverse communities around the world that are inspired by the work of Dr. Greene. Outside of the normal academic conversations on art education and pedagogy, our partners represent K-12 educators, independent scholars, as well as Teaching Artists who seek a deeper awareness and understanding of Aesthetic Education and Social Imagination and wish to bring new perspectives to their own teaching, artistic work, community engagement, or academic pursuits.

Some examples of Maxine’s influence and inspiration:

• In the UK, the Cambridge University Primary School has told us that they have designed their  vision around Maxine’s Releasing the Imagination. In a recent interview with Principal James Biddulph, he describes how the school, founded in 2015, is rooted in her work. They use the phrase “Releasing the Imagination: Celebrating the Possible” to headline their mission. 

• In Mexico, Tere Quintanilla, has founded IMASE, a not-for-profit organization that parallels the work developed at Lincoln Center Institute where Maxine was the philosopher in residence. 

• In Israel, the Tarbut Movement is also grounded in Releasing the Imagination.  One of the founders of this national cultural movement, Talia Fine , told us that this book was “their bible”. From their brochure, in a section entitled: "Finding Pedagogical Inspiration in the Works of Maxine Greene"

It was only after ten years of cultural and educational activity - with children, teens and adults from all sectors and classes – that we became acquainted with Maxine Greene's writings. We found them to be a powerful expression of our intuitive thoughts that guide our actions - of the liberating force and the moral role of artistic education.
 

In the near future we hope to generate opportunities for interviews, seminars, and conferences focusing on various aspects of Dr. Greene’s work. We want to create an ongoing, evolving space to explore various points of view and practices around Aesthetic Education and the possibilities of Social Imagination from multiple perspectives and in so doing, enlarge the community to include those that have yet to discover Maxine’s transformational work.

MGI Website Library Expands

The Maxine Greene library, which provides a wide array of information about Maxine Greene, her scholarship, interviews, and information about publications inspired by her work, has expanded to include theses, dissertations, and information about artworks that Maxine  referenced in her books. The Institute was fortunate to have two researchers who were part of the Career Development Program through the Center for Arts Education to help with the development of the new library.

Interns Lezlie Villegas and Isabella Diaz were mentored by Project Assistant Eve Hauser and Maxine Greene Institute Executive Director, Holly Fairbank as they researched the internet and databases to discover relevant resources. This deeper dive into Maxine’s work and current scholarship about her work was informative to the interns. They spoke about the way Maxine influenced their thinking and aspirations as students and artists. Isabella shared, and demonstrated through her final project, the way that Maxine’s words encouraged her to question, to step outside of her comfort zone, and to take risks with her art. 

So how has the library expanded?

It now includes links to over 30 theses and dissertations  coming from masters and doctoral students from universities in Europe, Africa, Canada, and the United States. Board member Dr. Mark Pottinger, Professor of Music, Manhattan College, came up with the idea of expanding the library’s scope by including international dissertations. A sample of titles include "Listening for Sounds of Striving: Maxine Greene and Stories of Music Teacher Becomings" by Mya Katherine Magnusson Scarlato (2021),"How Do You Teach Imagination? A Pedagogical Portrait" by Jenna-Leigh Di Nardo (2021), and “I am…not yet”: Maxine Greene’s Notion of Naming and Becoming"by Christine Debelak Neider (2016). 

The online library also includes over 55 artists and artworks  who were referenced by Maxine in Variations on a Blue Guitar and Releasing the Imagination. Artists include Mary Oliver, Alvin Ailey, Federico Garcia Lorca, Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Ntozake Shange, and Gerhard Richter, among others. About Walt Whitman’s "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", Maxine (2001) wrote in Variations on a Blue Guitar about her experiences, and educators' experiences at the Lincoln Center Insitute Summer Session workshops:
I learn again in some fashion how to look and listen. I see the shadows on the sidewalk anew, the shifting reflections on the glass windows, I hear the voices in their multiple dialects. I begin inhabiting a world somewhat like Walt Whitman’s, I sometimes think, with the endless details, the catalogues, the new patterns becoming visible at every turn. I notice, I pay heed, I become indignant now and then. I am part of it. I can no longer withdraw (pp. 83-84).

The library includes links to Whitman’s poems “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “Song of Myself” on the Poetry Foundation site.

Faculty members and teaching artists have talked about how they refer to Maxine Greene’s works in their classes. Dr. Heidi Upton, Maxine Greene Institute President, introduces Maxine to her students in several ways in her first-year experience course at St. John’s University, including having them read “Wide-awakeness and the Moral Life” (1978) as a way to help them think about their place in the world and their ownership of their own learning.

It is easy to locate these resources on the Maxine Greene Institute Library by filtering by media. Researchers can go to the library: https://maxinegreene.org/library and find the Filter by Media option. Clicking on the Artworks media link will produce the list of researched artworks. Clicking on the Dissertation media filter will produce the dissertations. Use the View More button on each item to open up more information.

One beauty of the Maxine Greene Institute Library is that it is a dynamic resource. We are looking to add new media types in the future, expanding links to the Salons hosted by the Maxine Greene Institute and to videos of Maxine’s talks.

References
Greene, Maxine (2001). Variations on a blue guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute lectures on aesthetic education. Teachers College Press.
Greene, Maxine (1978). Wide-awakeness and the moral life. In Landscapes of learning (pp. 42-52). Teachers College Press.

Notes from the Field

Tere Quintanilla is an educator, theater artist and founder and director of IMASE in Mexico City
IMASE stands for Instituto Mexicano del Arte al Servicio de la Educacion and is described by Tere as:

An innovative educational initiative providing the opportunity to redefine the educational space as the place where violence is transformed into collaboration, vulnerability into entrepreneurship, hopelessness in the drive for change; a space where collegial interaction between artists and teachers is the engine of the construction of imaginative, meaningful and transcendental learning environments.

Tere has been a follower of Maxine Greene’s work in relation to aesthetic education and social imagination ever since she attended  a workshop in 1986 where she heard about Lincoln Center Institute.
The following is an excerpt from an interview between Tere and Holly Fairbank.

How did you hear about LCI and when did you first become involved with the program?

On October 29, 2001, I arrived at the 7th floor of the Rose Building, home of the Lincoln Center Institute (LCI). I still don't understand how things happened, but that trip was the entrance to an unimagined world.

Did you meet Maxine Greene? How did you come to translate “Variations on a Blue Guitar” into Spanish?

I didn't have the opportunity to meet Maxine in person on that occasion. I first met her through "Variations on a Blue Guitar'', a book that I managed to translate into Spanish. I carried out the technical review and, I have to confess, that there was a lot of terminology for which I sensed that a different vocabulary was required than the one used in Mexico for art education, but my understanding of her thought was very limited then. I first met her in a Summer workshop, I think in 2003, I entered one of her seminars and my perception was altered, something moved in my brain and I began to see the words making sense, like a flying puzzle of white pieces that little by little they settled in, everything started to make sense ... I don't know if I understood what she shared in her lecture, but something inexplicable happened to me when I listened to her, I was shocked, marked, that was the moment that ended up throwing me into the abyss of change. I didn't approach her, rather I kept to myself the arising sensations, letting them enter into me. Embody that experience by giving time to her own process… Was it perhaps an aesthetic experience? I still believe so. I don't remember if it was on that same trip or a year later, when we had a gathering at her house. We arrived having read a book by a South African writer, and in her living room I experienced the opportunity to listen to her again. I was enlivened by her presence. She always blew me away.

In bringing aesthetic education to Mexico and the development of IMASE what have you found to be most challenging and how have you been able to adapt the LCI practice to the needs and reality of your community?

I think there have been many simultaneous challenges that now that I think about them I see their magnitude. The development of IMASE, as a non-profit organization, has not turned out to be the best formula, since this organizational structure is seen in Mexico as charity. The non-profit culture that promotes development is a fairly new aspect in my country, still underdeveloped. A whole topic to deepen, it is a very different perspective compared to the operation of non-profits in the United States, among other things it is due to the fact that Mexican public policy is far from favoring this type of organization.

I live in a country where culture and education are either lucrative without a social concern or are subsidized by the government as a welfare obligation for the less favored, which separate them from a perspective of social development. Now, if I focus on the practice of Aesthetic Education, we start from a philosophical proposal that is built upon a practice. It invites us to be in continuous reflection and evolution, elements that today I recognize are outside of the Mexican cultural and educational practices of my country. I don't know how to share it without sounding like a victim of a system, but in the field of the arts, there is an education towards technique and history, as well as the formation of audiences, far removed from the formation of critical thinking, reflective entities, questioned and purposeful, aware of their context and reality.

Your CV reflects a deep commitment to theater, arts education and to what Maxine would have called the "social imagination", a dedication to making art and education accessible to all children. Could you talk about this aspect of your work?

My initial career is in theater. I believe that the theatrical process is invaluable to nurture people; Its spirit and dynamics can form deep, sensitive, reflective, purposeful human beings, and aware of their reality. When you inject to the theatrical process the perspective of Aesthetic Education, a social and human trigger is generated capable of transforming any reality.

For me Aesthetic Education (AE) is the tool, education the way, and the goal is social transformation. I cannot imagine a project that remains in artistic creation, or in the classrooms of an elementary school or university. Aesthetic Education has the subtlety of impacting people's behavior, and this goes beyond any sphere. What is done in the workshops creates new habits that transform attitudes, these attitudes permeate people's daily lives, enter the body of each person and accompany them in the interaction with their environment. I bet on that to change habits and attitudes, to build daily practices of peace.
The concept of social imagination resonates deeply with me, it gives meaning to my work, I am reluctant to stay in the gimmicky. For people to recognize that they can imagine a new reality and that this imagined reality can be built, takes time, requires a change in dynamics during daily interaction, requiring collaboration to happen. AE simultaneously stimulates growth, individually and collectively. They are inseparable even though they are two different paths. They are simultaneous but each one maintains its texture, aroma and color. Favoring change as a habit requires its time, its process. I hope to live long enough to recognize some social change. The evolution of a society is within a conscious and committed habit of continuous movement towards new realities. If we stop on what attracts and satisfies us, we fall asleep in it; it becomes static and loses its validity, its meaning, its strength.

My passion is in working with teachers, with group leaders, with artists. I want them to discover the richness of collaborative work. I am convinced that social transformation is in the hands of group leaders, we can call them teachers, we can call them social leaders, we can call them creators of art. It is with them that I am passionate about working, because when I see how they recognize what they did not see before, I imagine the path for social evolution.

Thank you very much, really thank you for this opportunity.

And thank you, Tere!

Recent Events

Maxine's Birthday Celebration

On December 12th The Maxine Greene Institute celebrated what would have been Maxine's 104th birthday.
 

Special tributes were made by William Ayers, Pam Burnard, Chris Emdin, Michelle Fine, David Gonzalez and Tere Quintanilla (see Notes from the Field interview in this Newsletter).

In addition there was a piano performance by Beata Moon and a toast with all attending guests over ZOOM lead by Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz. Here are some links to some highlights of this celebration. Happy Birthday, Maxine!

VIdeos ifrom this event include:

Introduction and Tributes

Beata Moon's Performance of Troubled Water, by Margaret Bonds 

Yolanda's Toast

Salon Series

Our first salon in this series was a three-part conversation with storyteller, musician and poet David Gonzalez posted over the summer and fall of 2020. 

Technologies of Enchantment

In each session David performs a few short stories from around the world and walks us through some aspects of the craft of storytelling including Words, Voice, Movement and Imagination and what he calls, “Technologies of Enchantment”. Joining David after the performance were education students from Holly Fairbank's aesthetic education classes at CUNY's Hunter College and the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC).

Now available on our YouTube Channel:

 Walking Into Awareness

This salon features a conversation with Matt Green, whose project of walking all the streets and byways of New York City was reported on in the documentary, The World Before Your Feet. In our Walking into Awareness Salon, Matt describes his connections to Maxine's thinking, showing us, through his own photographs and descriptions, how he notices what is there to be noticed as a first step to achieving wide-awakeness and all its subsequent riches. 

Finally, just arrived on our YouTube channel is the Maxine Greene Institute Salon:

Poetry Is Possibility

How does poetry “awaken people and move them to act? ”Amanda Nicole Gulla and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, two poet/professors, are in conversation with New School student Zoe Peacock-Jones about how “poetry, like other works of art, offers ways of seeing, ways of feeling that point to possibilities”  and how their own work as poets engages creative modes of thinking and perception that deeply influence their scholarship and teaching.

References:

Greene, M. (2006). Poetry and Patriotism. Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 87 No. 08, April 2006. pp. 596-596.

Greene, M. (2001). Variations on a Blue Guitar: The Lincoln Center Institute Lectures on Aesthetic Education. New York, NY.  Teachers College Press.

The Maxine Greene Institute