The trouble is that the people designing MFA or PhD art curricula, awarding degrees, and setting professional standards (or pretending to) never recognize that the degree is a credential for a job (with certain exceptions in art ed, computer graphics, or similar). They say the credential marks the holder as a "professional artist" which would include doing whatever artists do and/or teaching at college or university level. I happen to agree that the truth is that the art degrees are pragmatic credentials, not indicators of stipulated advanced knowledge and research achievement even though they shouldn't be. Years ago the situation was more realistic if less authentic. People sought MFAs because they wanted to teach and the curricula included coursework on teaching, assistantship teaching, etc. It was well understood that one could be a distinguished artist without any art degree....and many such artists did teach at universities but had low academic status as visiting, non-tenurable, faculty. The MFA was a pragmatic way to give artists a place in the academy on similar terms with faculty in other disciplines. Now the same pragmatics are pushing the studio PhD because too many MFAs are in the job market and the qualifying bar needs to be raised. But if there's no standard for the MFA how is there to be one for the PhD? You might be surprised that in some cases, not in the USA, people have received PhDs in studio simply for their career status and not for any course work or dissertation or research as required in other fields. For them it was simply a way to be credentialed. It's like the popular undergraduate degrees given for 'life experiences".
I'm way too smart and way too corrupted, weary and wise to be affected by resumes when judging art. Remember that I have looked at thousands and thousands of resumes and have examined thousands of exhibitions and have evaluated hundreds of artists face to face seeking academic jobs. The sad truth is that when an artist is being considered for a faculty post, the quality of his or her exhibitions -- the degree of visibility in the artworld (art-market), counts big, often trumping any proven teaching abilities even though everyone knows the judgment of the marketplace is suspect when comes to aesthetics or quality. All of this relates closely to aesthetics because while aesthetic inquiry is generally expected to be mindful of established positions and arguments and historical questions, the art practices that supposedly embody aesthetics are completely divorced from any similar rigor. But the myth that the rigor of art defines the rigor of aesthetic/theoretical inquiry is maintained. No one admits that marketplace success is aesthetic quality. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, March 13, 2010 9:26:23 AM Subject: Re: Physician, heal thyself On Mar 13, 2010, at 9:23 AM, William Conger wrote: > Maybe the old Art Students League model is best after all. No set curricula, no administrative assessments, no degrees, just good teaching by established artists, chosen by students, not assigned to them. But no artists from the League would obtain cushy tenure track jobs in today's art academia. Would any ASL student want such a job? There are three intertwined interests here, William: What the student wants to learn, what the teacher wants to teach, and what credentials some parties want to uphold. Credentials are ways to qualify for a job. If you want the job and it calls for a certain qualification, then get the qualification or change your goal. When you see an exhibition at a gallery, do you ever look at the artist's list of previous exhibitions? Does that change your reactions to the show? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
