Can institutional critique become a pedagogical methodology in art education? And if so, how might it work and under what circumstances? Andrea Fraser notes that there is no ‘outside’ of the institutions governing us, ‘we are the institution.’ And yet, to the extent that some voices within the institution are unheard the community is excluded.
How might an institutional critique operate within the institution from those who are not given a voice, what might be the pedagogical strategies to be adopted in art education to establish institutional critique as a form of pedagogy. The chapter looks at the case study of the Nüshu women in pre-communist patriarchal China who were given the space and time to creatively educate young women, albeit to a life of subservience and obedience. It argues that under the concept of institutional critique, their creativity achieved retrospective institutional recognition in the West. Institutional critique was not a criterion of value in China, nevertheless Western recognition of a forgotten practice allowed China to reclaim Nüshu as Chinese heritage.