Amy F. Ogata
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679607
- eISBN:
- 9781452948119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679607.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Design
In the final chapter I discuss how creativity was instilled through postwar public art and science education. In the mid-twentieth century, “creative art” became the general name for all types of art ...
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In the final chapter I discuss how creativity was instilled through postwar public art and science education. In the mid-twentieth century, “creative art” became the general name for all types of art education. I explore how school art instruction, art materials, and children’s museums created a widely disseminated image of childhood creativity.Less
In the final chapter I discuss how creativity was instilled through postwar public art and science education. In the mid-twentieth century, “creative art” became the general name for all types of art education. I explore how school art instruction, art materials, and children’s museums created a widely disseminated image of childhood creativity.
Amy F. Ogata
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679607
- eISBN:
- 9781452948119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679607.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Design
Chapter three explores how the ideal of “creative living” affected all residents of the postwar house. In increasingly informal postwar houses the playroom occupied a strategic place. Toy-like ...
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Chapter three explores how the ideal of “creative living” affected all residents of the postwar house. In increasingly informal postwar houses the playroom occupied a strategic place. Toy-like furniture and playhouses were sold to encouraged children to develop their own fantasy world while reinforcing the role of the parent as the model of creative activity in the home.Less
Chapter three explores how the ideal of “creative living” affected all residents of the postwar house. In increasingly informal postwar houses the playroom occupied a strategic place. Toy-like furniture and playhouses were sold to encouraged children to develop their own fantasy world while reinforcing the role of the parent as the model of creative activity in the home.
Amy F. Ogata
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679607
- eISBN:
- 9781452948119
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679607.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Design
This book explores how a perception of children as imaginative and “naturally” creative was constructed, disseminated, and consumed in the United States after World War II. I argue that educational ...
More
This book explores how a perception of children as imaginative and “naturally” creative was constructed, disseminated, and consumed in the United States after World War II. I argue that educational toys, playgrounds, the smaller middle-class house, thousands of postwar schools, and children’s museums, were designed to cultivate an ideal of imagination in a growing cohort of Baby Boom children. Psychologists avidly studied creativity after 1950, and their research was embraced by the educational toy industry, invoked in parenting guides, taught in school arts classes, and erected in new school buildings and museums. Enthusiasm for encouraging creativity in children met and countered Cold War fears of failing competitiveness and the postwar critique of social conformity, becoming an emblem of national revitalization. I describe how a belief in children’s capacity for imagination and independent thinking was transformed from an elite concern of the interwar years to a fully consumable and aspirational ideal that has not yet abated. I emphasize the ways that material goods and spaces embodied this abstract social and educational discourse. However, I also argue that things and spaces were not passive receptacles, but material actors that actively transformed a popular understanding of creativity during a crucial period of educational reform, economic expansion, and Cold War anxiety. Historicizing, rather than essentializing, the idea of childhood creativity, reveals how this notion continues to haunt everyday things, the built environment, and American culture.Less
This book explores how a perception of children as imaginative and “naturally” creative was constructed, disseminated, and consumed in the United States after World War II. I argue that educational toys, playgrounds, the smaller middle-class house, thousands of postwar schools, and children’s museums, were designed to cultivate an ideal of imagination in a growing cohort of Baby Boom children. Psychologists avidly studied creativity after 1950, and their research was embraced by the educational toy industry, invoked in parenting guides, taught in school arts classes, and erected in new school buildings and museums. Enthusiasm for encouraging creativity in children met and countered Cold War fears of failing competitiveness and the postwar critique of social conformity, becoming an emblem of national revitalization. I describe how a belief in children’s capacity for imagination and independent thinking was transformed from an elite concern of the interwar years to a fully consumable and aspirational ideal that has not yet abated. I emphasize the ways that material goods and spaces embodied this abstract social and educational discourse. However, I also argue that things and spaces were not passive receptacles, but material actors that actively transformed a popular understanding of creativity during a crucial period of educational reform, economic expansion, and Cold War anxiety. Historicizing, rather than essentializing, the idea of childhood creativity, reveals how this notion continues to haunt everyday things, the built environment, and American culture.
Amy F. Ogata
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679607
- eISBN:
- 9781452948119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679607.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Design
Chapter two shows how the concept of play, imagination, and the educational toy market fortified the notion of childhood creativity. Manufacturers, designers, and even art museums created new toys ...
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Chapter two shows how the concept of play, imagination, and the educational toy market fortified the notion of childhood creativity. Manufacturers, designers, and even art museums created new toys that promised to instill creativity and worked to transform the playground.Less
Chapter two shows how the concept of play, imagination, and the educational toy market fortified the notion of childhood creativity. Manufacturers, designers, and even art museums created new toys that promised to instill creativity and worked to transform the playground.
Amy F. Ogata
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679607
- eISBN:
- 9781452948119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679607.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Design
Chapter 1 examines how demographic shifts toward young families, a rise in wages, and concerns about raising children grew intensely. Amidst debates on affluence and social conformity, psychologists ...
More
Chapter 1 examines how demographic shifts toward young families, a rise in wages, and concerns about raising children grew intensely. Amidst debates on affluence and social conformity, psychologists devoted new energy to the study of creativity. The figure of the creative child was thus constituted scientifically, materially, and visually in postwar picture books and on television.Less
Chapter 1 examines how demographic shifts toward young families, a rise in wages, and concerns about raising children grew intensely. Amidst debates on affluence and social conformity, psychologists devoted new energy to the study of creativity. The figure of the creative child was thus constituted scientifically, materially, and visually in postwar picture books and on television.
Amy F. Ogata
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816679607
- eISBN:
- 9781452948119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816679607.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Design
Population shifts, new housing, and the baby boom dictated the need for thousands of new schools. Dramatic changes in the school environment reflected new notions of teaching. Behind these changes ...
More
Population shifts, new housing, and the baby boom dictated the need for thousands of new schools. Dramatic changes in the school environment reflected new notions of teaching. Behind these changes lay the increasing acceptance of modern design as a means of helping children to learn in ways that might stimulate their attention and their imaginations.Less
Population shifts, new housing, and the baby boom dictated the need for thousands of new schools. Dramatic changes in the school environment reflected new notions of teaching. Behind these changes lay the increasing acceptance of modern design as a means of helping children to learn in ways that might stimulate their attention and their imaginations.
