"Aesthetic Pluralism and Multicultural Art Education" by Lynn M. Hart

I just read through this article. It was written in 1991, so it's a little dated but I thought it contained a lot of good information concerning art "systems." It talked about how our system of teaching art in North America is totally based on the the Western model of abstract formalism (tenets of abstract formalism include the "authority of the individual maker," the "notion of the uniqueness of the individual work," the "notion of the centrality of the institution of painting," and the "primary value of the abstract form." The author talked about how limiting this model is, especially for children that come to America from other countries and are familiar with other models of art making. A couple other models or systems the author talked about were anti-formalism and pluralism. Anti-formalism was described as a system of judging art based on personal emotional response. Pluralism was described as a system of art that does not put formalism at the pinnacle, but instead includes it equally in a broad collection of multicultural art systems. According to the author, "pluralist aesthetics does not mean the imposition of a single model, nor even a model of freedom and self-expression, but rather it suggests that real freedom may be the freedom to move among a variety of models."