With the globalisation of Christianity, Christian art emerged on all continents in the course of the 20th century. The establishment of centres and schools for the visual arts has contributed significantly to this. Many of these art schools are hardly known and have rarely been researched coherently. Yet they can be regarded as focal points in the broad field of ‘mission and art’, because they brought people together to engage artistically with the gospel, in dialogue with each other, often conceptually reflected and over longer periods of time or even generations. But the reservations are great: were art schools not mainly instruments of heteronomy and missionary purposes that only produced inferior folk art? This essay examines critically such prejudices using selected examples of art. It explains why art schools have played and continue to play an outstanding role in emancipation, dialogue and inculturation.