Abstract

Art education is often justified as a means of helping students make sense of themselves and their world through the study of works of art and visual culture. Within everyday aestheticized social spaces, such as amusement parks, restaurants, malls, and barbershops, are embedded educationally meaningful opportunities of cultural, social, philosophical, and aesthetic significance. This article describes a barbershop as a multisensory; socially constructed educational environment. The barbershop is valuable to art education because it is simultaneously a hypertextual curriculum metaphor, an example of visual culture, and a socially constructed place that offers lessons about spirituality community, ritual and the meaningful examination of everyday life. As a site of social discourse, interpretation, and cultural commentary, the barbershop-as-hypertext offers points of entry into important life lessons not taught in school. In conclusion, the benefits of constructing an artroom as a social environment similar to that of a barbershop are considered.

How to Cite:

Carpenter, B. S., (2003) “Never a Dull Moment: Pat’s Babershop as Educational Environment, Hypertext, and Place”, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education 21(1), 5-18. doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jcrae.4996