Over the past decade, an increasing number of researchers in North America, Britain, and South America have become interested in the history of art education. Their work has had little impact on general educational history but high visibility in the art education network. In addition to numerous journal articles, there have been several books and seven international conferences on the topic since the early 1980s. Prior to then, however, very little was written about the subject, or at least very little that was new. Art education historiography has never had its Bernard Bailyn or its Lawrence Cremin, or even its Ellwood Cubberley. But in the United States it did have someone who served one of Cubberley's functions: to provide subsequent historians with a set, narrow interpretive framework. That person was Isaac Edwards Clarke.