Learning Mind: Experience Into Art

co-edited by Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob

Published by University of California Press, 2009.

How is art conceived, created, and experienced? How is it taught? How does the act of viewing a work make the viewer part of that work? Learning Mind: Experience Into Art addresses these questions as it documents changing practices in the making, teaching, and exhibition of art. Timely, multifaceted, and instructive, this groundbreaking volume explores the contemporary art experience and its expanding presence in society through lively essays, revealing interviews, and provocative conversations with some of the most influential artists and educators of our time.

Featured artists include Magdalena Abakanowicz, Ann Hamilton, Alfredo Jaar, Kerry James Marshall, and Ernesto Pujol, along with designers Walter Hood and Bruce Mau. Contributing authors include philosopher Arthur Danto, psychiatrist Mark Epstein, theorist W.J.T. Mitchell, chef-educator Alice Waters, museum directors Marcia Tucker, Lawrence Rinder, and Christopher Bedford, art critics Michael Brenson and Jerry Saltz, art historian David Getsy, and artist and educator Ronald Jones. In demonstrating the role that art schools and universities play in the creative process, Learning Mind offers students, teachers, and readers new and vital theoretical texts as well as practical strategies for integrating art into our daily lives.