The requirements for gifted education programs in the visual and performing arts are discussed, stressing the need for comprehensive assessment of aptitude, achievement, and attitudes of gifted students. The unique nature of learning activities and inservice programs for teachers in the arts are considered. (CM)

Despite discrepancies and neglected areas in the literature on the aesthetic responses of young children to the visual arts, a review of that literature reveals that a view of young children as having definite, responsive capabilities in the arts is surfacing and should be acknowledged. (AM)

Investigates the effects of prior knowledge, presentation time, and selected task demands on information processed by college students of two-dimensional visual art that displayed varying abstraction levels. Results indicated that the amount and type of information subjects remembered about visual art were influenced by each of these factors.…

Describes a pilot arts festival for elementary schools held in Richland County, South Carolina. Students attended theatrical performances and learned about audience etiquette. In each school, artists-in-residence taught crafts to small groups. The festival ended with a countywide, weekend art fair. (AM)

Describes a process and criteria for identifying high school students gifted in visual arts. Student portfolios were assessed by local professionals according to technical ability, problem-solving ability, communication of ideas, and inventiveness. The procedure selected students whose ability was at least three years above their grade level. (AM)

In an interview, designer and filmmaker Saul Bass discusses the nature of creativity and the creative process and his work in the visual arts and their implications for education. (HTH)

The technique of using toy cameras for both black-and-white and color photography in the art class is described. The author suggests that expensive equipment can limit the growth of a beginning photographer by emphasizing technique and equipment instead of in-depth experience with composition fundamentals and ideas. (KC)

Teachers and students who are ethnographers and who study the artifacts and "visual sign making" of their own culture will learn to value and understand the arts, as well as to produce art that matters. (Author)

The authors examined use of a bipolar scale containing ten descriptors of basic art concepts (e.g. "linear-painterly") identified by Heinrich Wolfflin for analyzing paintings. They found that both trained observers (art history students) and untrained observers (psychology students) could apply Wolfflin's concepts reliably to Renaissance…

The author states his belief that art education is more than developing art products, and that as long as the art product is the goal, rather than the educating of the child through the visual arts concepts, the potential of this discipline as a tool for learning will remain diminished. (Author/KC)

A eulogy to art educator and researcher Henry Schaefer-Simmern, explaining his theory of gestalt visual conceiving and artistic cognition. (SJL)

Described is a demonstration to illustrate the storytelling qualities of "clayscapes" and to suggest just one of the innumerable sculptured environments that are possible with clay. Clayscapes are sculptures which are minilandscapes made of clay. (KC)

In a voluntary summer program, Kingston High School students can work with internationnaly-recognized muralist Anton Refregier. (SJL)

The author suggests some approaches for facilitating the imagination and imagery activity essential to creative production in the visual and performing arts. Literature is reviewed on creative imagination imagery, the function of imagery, perception imagery and art, abilities and the visual performing arts, and facilitating the use of imagery.…

One girl's achievements in pattern-making are related with the intent of examining the way children think and the character and quality of the intellectual growth. (MP)