Sunday October 9, 2005
What's wrong with Miami university arts programs?
Yes, Miami is attracting more and more art fairs with every year. We have the collectors, and an ever growing population of interesting artists and art bloggers.
There is something lacking, though, in Miami’s university fine arts programs. They appear to be staffed with old-fashinoned, old-thinking professors who are concerned with teaching their students how to draw well, but not how to think in the terms that the contemporary art scene thinks in, nor how to navigate that world. There are contemporary artists, and the way art is taught in our local universities is oblivious not just to their work, but seemingly to their very thinking process, their approach, and their work’s relationship to its audience. Let’s look at some specific schools (it should be mentioned that university web sites are a disgraceful mess pretty much worldwide; we shall try not to hold the incoherence of our local universities’ sites against them).
FIU’s art program is often regarded as the best in the city. And in fact, there are lots of wonderful art teachers there; note this (illegible and unclickable) list. Bill Burke, Manny Torres, and of course Peggy Nolan come to mind right away. The problem is that, on ballance, the pervasive view is backwards, ignoring the last 25 years of art history; a little of that is great, but it needs to be matched with some truly contemporary, theorist perspectives. The FIU photography department’s touchstone is William Eggleston. How, then, do you deal with a student who’s references are Thomas Ruff or Cindy Sherman (who are hardly cutting edge)? Not well. The result is that artists headed to a place on the international art scene may be abetted by the FIU art program, but they will have to work hard to get their money’s worth from their education.
The University of Miami art department deserves mention. Led by the esteemed Darby Bannard, they have what you would expect: a department that leans heavily on painting, and considers a lab with 16 Macs to be the height of state-of-the-art, with nary a trace of video art, computer art, or sound art.
We have the Art Institute, where “visual art” is largely synonymous with “painting.” We have FAU, where the home page of the art department looks like this. Finally, we have New World, which actually has something called “Electronic Intermedia” in its Areas of Concentration. Then again, “Graphic Design” is also an area, so maybe electronic intermedia is a website building class?
Overall, the scene is bleak. If the contemporary artists studying in Miami are going to break new ground on the international art scene, they will be doing it in spite of, not because of, their education. And meanwhile we are probably loosing artists to schools in other places, and failing to attract the students we need to insure that Miami can give all those artfair-goers something to stick around for after the first week in December.
Naturally, a good caveat here is that we have no idea what we’re talking about here. This is based on general impressions, anecdotal conversations, and scrutiny of the schools’ web sites. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, feel free to leave comments or submit counter-arguments.
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I am in complete and total agreement. The only place I would even consider taking a class would be SFAC. The universities are too disconnected with reality and at least I can support SFAC while having some fun.
i don’t understand…”why would anyone want to be taught how to think in the terms that the contemporary art scene thinks in”?
this is a dialog, matt. unlike journalists, nobody’s getting paid to write this blog. so yes, it’s my opinion, based on my observations. anyone who has conflicting observations should add them to the conversation.
is it unreasonable to expect that a school’s web site would be an acurate reflection of their values and priorities?
The difference in the school i am attending now and the school i did my undergrad (fiu) is that there is around 12 different departments i can attend classes in, instead of the 5 FIU had to offer. Lucily i interacted with some great proffessors at FIU, which got me where i am now.
I am actually wondering what the solution can be, because there is always a shortage of money.
in reaction to : ”....Miami can give all those artfair-goers something to stick around for after the first week in December…..”
Omni Art was a good attempt that happend during art-basel. Hopefully next year they will get more funding and a better show.
We have no chance in the race/tribe run.
What a surprise. We demand a quality education…yet we pay our teachers so little…
Professors are being replaced by part-time, underpaid adjuncts. The school saves money. And the curriculum deteriorates.
You get what you pay for.
re: alesh
sure alesh. i’m sure you chose your university (if you even went to one) by their web site (that’s if you’re 30 or under). what a weak and slothful argument.
i’m not going to judge your blog by the standards of a blog b/c that’s equative to judging a wad of gum on a sidewalk – i.e. it’s just an opinion (oh, is that it?) but how you can criticize a university by their web site and “general impressions” – besides being psychic and taking a gamble – is obviously poor thinking.
so the art scene, art classes, sources for journalism, the new arts center, the roads, exotic python owners are all not up to par. thanks for the fantastic laundry list, i wish everyone could have such low goals in life.
criticalmouth.com.
you’re right, matt: i didn’t ATTEND each of the universities i’ve discussed. but i HAVE talked to people who’ve attended them. it’s my blog, and all i can offer is my impression. i welcome evidence to the contrary.
sure, looking at a university’s web site is not a particularly reliable way to determine what’s important to them. but is that really me fault? if PAINTING accounts for 50% of a school’s curriculum and 90% of their web site is that my fault?
Firstly, please don’t judge my school by our website. It stinks. We know it. We can’t do anything about it.
I’ve given this a lot of thought already, in the form of a post called This Art School Ain’t Big Enough for the Two of Us. It may not be possible to get every kind of artist the skills that each one needs within a four-year generalized program. (It may not be possible to learn art, anyway, but that’s a different issue.) By default, the strength of the department equals the strengths of the faculty, which is why you have good painting instruction at AI and UM, and good photography at FIU. That’s fine, actually, because the methods being taught are only part of the equation – there’s also just getting that art bug, which is platform-independent, as it were.
You might also consider whether “how to think in the terms that the contemporary art scene thinks in, [and] how to navigate that world” is a philosophical concern or a commercial one. I would argue that it’s the latter disguised as the former, and that such concerns are quite easy to emulate, if not parody. Thus there are some solid philosophies that need to be addressed within a curriculum, as well as some smart business practices, but conflating them is a recipe for cynicism.
i wholeheartedly agree with [F]art, why learn to be idiotic.. either way franklin is partially right in regards to the underlying philosophy of commercial prerogatives BUT it’s not that simple and in making art that revolves around discourse we counter the complacency of looking for approval or being a dried-out art professor for an uncountable amount of years, while struggling to stay alive and approved of. in any case, the resource of fiu’s library beats your diagnose, because of it, the possibility of being well informed can circumvent the slack-ass notion of only learning what your taught.
that headline looks a lot like the one seen on ignore’s web site.
what’s ignore’s website?
in making art that revolves around discourse we counter the complacency of looking for approval
Unfortunately, that’s platform-independent, too. You’re describing a pedagogical problem in which the teacher wants the student to adhere to some kind of orthodoxy, and you can find the phenomenon among all kinds of teachers from the most traditional to the most anti-traditional. Yes, the library helps get out of that, but only if the student uses it. That kind of self-motivation is just crucial, and that definitely can’t be taught.
Franklin~
I’m putting the Art and Culture Center’s web site together with textpattern and some duct tape. It’s taken about three weeks. Conclusion: any organization that cares what the outside world thinks of them has no excuse for having a website that projects priorities other then what that organization holds.
Universities extra hurdles because (i guess?) some departments had independent web sites at some point that were integrated (rather crudely) into the main site. University politics plays into this, too, no doubt. But I’m sticking to my above claim.
In the case of IFAC (the art institute of miami), that wasn’t a particular problem, because the page I linked to was just a list of curriculum that art students take. Insofar as the list is accurate, we can use it to make judgements about the school. If you have 3 painting courses for every digital art class, then the school cares much more about painting then digital art. Speaking of which,
Computer Basics – CS1101
This required course explores basic computer concepts and terminology pertaining to hardware, software, and the Internet. It focuses on developing documents, formatting, editing, printing styles, master documents and mail mergers. The course introduces the student to word processing (Microsoft Word) and data management and analysis (Microsoft Excel). Later in the course, the student is introduced to Microsoft PowerPoint and learns how to create, edit, and present slides for presentations. Prerequisites: None
This course about doing a mail merge in microsoft word and “terminology pertaining to hardware, software, and the internet” is required ???? What about the 99% of students who learned that stuff when they were 12?
Also, if you’re trying to teach “the art bug” to your university-level art majors, i dare say you’re preaching to the choir.
But whatever: my main point revolves around the contemporary artists link. There is something in the work of almost everyone on that list that seems like it should be teachable, but appears conspiculously ignored in all the art schools i’m talking about. If you think that something is a “commercial concern,” maybe I need to try to pin it down a little better, but my impression is that it has more to do with a way of thinking about art very broadly.
I did address business practices, and you’re correct that “conflating them is a recipe for cynicism.” For the record, I regard the teaching of contemporary approaches to art as much more important then the business of art, though I think they’re both important.
.....!~
the resource of fiu’s library beats your diagnose, because of it, the possibility of being well informed can circumvent the slack-ass notion of only learning what your taught.
Huh? You’re telling me that FIU’s art program doesn’t need to be any good because a willing student can apply themselves and supplement their education by reading books from the library?? That’s so stupid it's funny. If it were true, why would you need to have classes at all? Why not just have the library?
(By the way, I assume that they’re talking abou