Interculturalism and Visual Art Education: Seeking for »Spaces in Between«

Interculturalism in art education refers to pedagogic strategies that support positive attitudes regarding the cultural plurality of our societies, understanding diversity as a source of knowledge. Actually, it also deals with the effects of western art canons ' dominance in the mayority of the world's formal art education systems. The optimal intercultural encounter (considered as an individual experience using the products of another culture) facilitates individuation. It deals with »the ideal/virtual « word of images and ideas promoted by media and »the social/individual « position considering the unaccepted issues of (social) ego resulting in a subject projected on Others. Following these ideas, it is obvious that »intercultural attitudes « are unconscious, the moment they become conscious, they fall into a »decontextuated cultural tourism«, that does not fit educational aims. In this context, a relevant question is, should interculturalism be imposed as learning content by the curriculum (ignoring subject and context specifities)? Many authors caracterize this as the implementatio