Re statement below: Sometimes yes and sometimes no. The user gets to decide the value of the product, not the supplier. The bigger question is to ask if the ultimate purpose of the MFA is to produce better art. I'm not sure that's a reasonable or even desirable expectation. The right question is to ask if the ultimate purpose of the MFA is to produce better artists. A generally held observation (see Howard Singerman) is that art schools do not teach people how to make art but instead teach them how to be artists. This is analogous to the philosophy of an MBA which teaches people how to be effective and versatile managers in any situation but not how to manage, say, ABC Coal Company or any particular sector of business.
If the MFA is about teaching people how to be artists then that changes the scope of skills from particular practices with particular media, like paint or clay, to a very broad contextual approach that deals with how to make art of this or that whatever it might be. That's why 'theory' has taken on a big role in the MFA programs. It's all about different ways to contextualize things and activities as art and that requires a 'point of view' and a mode of language that facilitates the contextualization, then symbolized by objects or concepts. In that way, at least, the MFA theory approach might be a lot like the 'case-study' approach in MBA programs. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, January 7, 2012 4:04:25 AM Subject: "...MFA art programs are just a summer camp experience with pretense and attitude. The art they produce is not demonstrably better than art produced outside of academic dialogues." "...MFA art programs are just a summer camp experience with pretense and attitude. The art they produce is not demonstrably better than art produced outside of academic dialogues." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mat-gleason/twelve-art-world-habits-to-ditch-in-2012_b_1181672.html
