Contemporary art as a learning experience

Art has changed a lot during the last fifty years. In spite of that, the role of art in schools has remained the same. The aim of this paper is to show the many different ways contemporary art offers itself as an environment for learning. An idea of contemporary art as a learning experience presented here is based on teachers' views on the matter. The analysis of the material shows that by concretizing the properties of artworks and the experience produced by them, arguments for seeing contemporary art both as a credible and a necessary environment of learning can be found. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Professor Heikki Ruismaki and Adjunct professor Inkeri Ruokonen