User:Rhoda Kellogg

Golden Gate Kindergarten Association, San Francisco, CA https://www.phoebehearstpreschool.org/ Children's Drawings, Children's Minds, by Rhoda Kellogg c.1979

Rhoda Kellogg (b. 1898, Bruce, WI, d. 1987, San Francisco, CA) was an early childhood scholar, theorist, educator, author and activist.

She amassed an extensive and wide-ranging collection of child art—numbering over a million pieces—through her travels in 30 countries around the world and through her work with children.

Rhoda Kellogg organized San Francisco’s first nursery school in 1928. She designed the Phoebe A. Hearst Preschool (in 1965, at its current location) also in San Francisco, the only surviving program of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association, and served as its director from 1966-1986. She came to the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association in 1945, after serving as director of 11 Lanham nursery schools in Vallejo, California, part of the Federal Works Agency. (Public child care centers were first established in California with federal funds provided by the Lanham Act in response to the wartime emergency, which created an immediate need for women workers in defense industries.) She also served as director of WPA Nursery School in Brooklyn, New York.

Ms. Kellogg earned an international reputation for her pioneering research in children’s art through lecturing, teaching and publications, notably in her books such as What Children Scribble and Why (1955), The Psychology of Children’s Art (1967), Analyzing Children’s Art (1969) and Children’s Drawings, Children’s Minds (1979). Over the course of her career, she developed a classification system that describes the development of graphic expression in young children. Her research demonstrated that children follow a predictable continuum of graphic development, from scribbles through certain basic forms, and that this development is universal, across cultures. She further asserted that children’s art can be a key to understanding the mental growth and educational needs of children. Her theories laid the groundwork for the educational curriculum still in use at the Phoebe A. Hearst Preschool Learning Center today.

She placed great importance on creating a program in which children experienced trust, comfort and care, with an emphasis on teacher training, parent education and equal access. Only in such an environment could artistic development be a focus. She collected work from individual children over the course of their entire time in preschool, and, in some cases, into their elementary years.

For over four decades, Rhoda Kellogg was in a continual state of processing child art, from within the GGKA program, from outside institutions and from her extensive travels. She employed careful and specific methods to archive, share and promote the collection, mounting individual pieces, creating taxonomy sheets, tracing original work, compiling books and binders, curating exhibits, and loaning/donating works to numerous organizations.

Her skilled observations and meticulous documentation established her as a consummate scientist and authority on artistic development in young children. Her writings, presentations and collaborations influenced countless educators, parents and colleagues. She created new metrics by which to view and interpret child art and advocated for a “whole child” approach to learning long before that was the widely held practice it is today.

The Physical Collection

The bulk of the collection is housed in New Haven, Connecticut. A portion remains at Phoebe A. Hearst Preschool Learning Center in San Francisco, including artifacts and memorabilia. The archiving is taking place at a digital studio in Brooklyn, N.Y.