Ashley Mask presents "Mapping a Constellation: Research as Personal Waymaking"
Assistant Professor of Art Education Ashley Mask joined fellow Columbia University doctoral alumna Rébecca Bourgault at the 2024 Graduate Research in Art Education ("GRAE") Conference in October to deliver keynotes and hold dialogue with attendees. The conference provides a forum for doctoral students from Penn State University, Ohio State University and Columbia University Teachers College to discuss issues and developments in art education that are being opened up by their dissertation research.
Mask's keynote address, called "Mapping a Constellation: Research as Personal Waymaking,” made connections across her scholarly practice, from her 2020 dissertation centering the experiences of novice art museum educators to more recent research and writing about teaching virtually during the COVID pandemic, mentoring in museum education, and embodying one’s convictions through the pedagogical approaches one chooses as an educator. Her talk encouraged new researchers to consider throughlines, or “constellations,” of research interests to both find and make their way forward as scholars.
Graduate Research in Art Education Conference
The Graduate Research in Art Education (GRAE) Conference provides a forum for doctoral students from Penn State University, Ohio State University and Teachers College to discuss issues and developments in art education that are being opened up by their dissertation research. Since 2005, the GRAE Conference takes place each fall semester in a rotation at one of the participating institutions. The 20th Annual GRAE was hosted by Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, on October 25 and 26, 2024.
About Ashley Mask
Dr. Ashley Mask is an artist, art and museum educator, and researcher-scholar. Prior to joining Western, Ashley taught at Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, all in New York City. In addition to teaching with museum collections and in art classrooms, she also serves as a co-editor for Instructional Resources in the journal Art Education.
Her research interests include embodied teaching and learning in art education, anti-racist and liberating pedagogies in museums, and wayfinding for novice art museum educators. Prior to her doctoral studies, Ashley led the education departments at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado.
She holds an Ed.D. from Columbia University, an M.S.Ed. from Bank Street College, an M.F.A. from the University of Delaware, and a B.F.A. from the University of Montevallo, a small public liberal arts university in rural Alabama, where her love for art-making and access to the arts first began.
