Does Anyone Care About Art Schools?

Lavender Room
1

Just a couple of days a after I posted this in another thread here, Philadelphia’s University Of The Arts (@UArts) suddenly announce its immediate closure

https://youtu.be/2OwRUyZMKwI?si=U3Cnk1dVyqkqvFzW

https://6abc.com/post/university-of-the-arts-philadelphia-closing-letter-accreditation-president-kerry-walk/14897571/

Needless to say, it has not been well received

A few months ago Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (@PAFA) announced that it was no longer continuing its BA and BFA programs, but would remain open for Certificate Programs (which aren’t eligible for Student Loans, so you have to pay for them your own way)

Many years ago, the school I went to closed down, and is now an Old Navy (BUT the building itself is on some Historic Registry, and looks the same as it ever was, so there’s that)

This means there is only ONE stand-alone art College in the city now - Moore College of Art; Temple, Drexel, and UPenn have art PROGRAMS, but not art SCHOOLS (UPenn has a building named for Charles Addams)

Temple, Drexel, Moore, and Rutgers-Camden have offered assistance to displaced UArts students, and today I saw that College For Creative Studies in Detroit has reached out

My question is: Does anyone really care? Is studying Art even worth it? “It’s not like a REAL JOB” right?

We nicknamed our school “The Art Vo-Tech” as it was closer to a Trade School than PAFA was (BTW: David Lynch went to PAFA). The only reason I went anywhere was because my mom saying “might as well. You’re no good at anything else” and I didn’t have anything close enough to a portfolio to get into the others

Secondly, without art schools, where are the new BANDS gonna come from? LOL

I pretty much know where this will fall here, but I wanted to get it off my chest with you, my friends

Thank you for your time
Randy

2

Do I really care? I do and I don’t but veer more into I don’t.

That stated , I do understand the importance the arts have to culture and society. How that gets paid for and monetized is not my Rubik’s Cube to solve. With the insane costs of college educations and the arts not having an easy and obvious pathway to high paying jobs… it’s an unfortunate reality art schools are going to fail. Putting more money into STEM, MBAs, and law schools makes more fiscal sense.

3

There is not much many in making art but there one can well paind teaching it. With good promotion and showmanship, one can make pretty good money.

4

And then there are the careers that launch from art school. Not everyone is a starving potter. Think children’s book illustrators, cartoonists, magazine graphic layout designers, interior designers, photographers of all kinds, the creative departments for marketing and Ad companies big and small/local, Etc.

I would bet a large portion of what we see every day and take for granted can be somehow linked to an art school.

5

As someone who did the art program at one of the universities RandMart called out for not having an art school :wink: - very few of my classmates (there were less than 20 of us in my class) went and did art full time (myself included in that). The most notable won the Bravo Work of Art reality show and got a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum. The other most interesting on the art front ran T-Studio at the NYTimes for a few years. At least a few of us ended up in careers much more typical for the rest of the school.

I do remember going to some fun and very stereotypically art school parties (shirtless guy, sticking a microphone in a mason jar, running it through bunch of distortion pedals, and screaming into the jar was the entertainment) that had students from UArts there, so when I get my hands on a yuengling I’ll raise a toast.

6

Here’s a pretty decent (and non-paywalled) summation of the situation so far, if anyone is interested

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/philadelphias-uarts-class-action-lawsuit-sudden-closure-1234709157/

I have to admit, when I first saw pics posted of the protest signs taped up on the school’s walls, I got a chuckle at the comment “you’d think art students could make better signs?”
.

7

I wish they would shut down the major art college in Ontario. It has become a nest of anti-semitism among other things. People painting “kill jews” in the stair wells. A friend of mine who had an artsy but otherwise seemingly normal daughter went there and started making paintings with menstrual blood of all things.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.4237764#:~:text=Student%20sues%20OCAD%20U%20for%20%241M%20over%20alleged%20anti-Jewish%20discrimination,-11%20days%20ago&text=The%20statement%20of%20claim%20states,failure%20to%20protect%20Jewish%20students.

Despite that I think we need arts schools. Maybe if they spent their time on the nuts and bolts of art vs most of their time with art as radical politics? Most modern art I see I struggle to even understand what the heck they are trying to say as well. I have an instructional book on painting whose author makes a full time living making art. She describes being taught very little of the mechanics of making art in art school having to learn that after.

8

Do I remember you mentioning Tim Barry at one time? Your post reminded my of a line from him about art school:

It’s safe to say that I lost grip (oh look)
There goes another hipster kid
In neon on a track bike paying a school to learn art

9

Do I really care? I do and I don’t but veer more into I don’t.

That stated , I do understand the importance the arts have to culture and society. How that gets paid for and monetized is not my Rubik’s Cube to solve. With the insane costs of college educations and the arts not having an easy and obvious pathway to high paying jobs… it’s an unfortunate reality art schools are going to fail. Putting more money into STEM, MBAs, and law schools makes more fiscal sense.

Mostly where I stand, and I say this as someone who holds a bachelor’s degree in visual arts. I discovered quickly that it makes a better hobby than vocation, and in terms of an investment in the future of a high school graduate, no way in hell would I encourage anyone but the exceptionally rare standout student to even consider it. If they’re playing with their parents money and there’s no shortage of it, have at it. But in terms of taking out loans, taxpayer funded grants etc., no. It’s a money pit. I’m not singling out art schools specifically in this regard, but they’re probably more concentrated in terms of degrees that don’t pay for themselves than any other institutions of higher learning.

I would rather live in a world of art than technology, but here in the real world where economics matter it’s a business decision.

10

Do I really care? I do and I don’t but veer more into I don’t.

That stated , I do understand the importance the arts have to culture and society. How that gets paid for and monetized is not my Rubik’s Cube to solve. With the insane costs of college educations and the arts not having an easy and obvious pathway to high paying jobs… it’s an unfortunate reality art schools are going to fail. Putting more money into STEM, MBAs, and law schools makes more fiscal sense.

The thing is though is that STEM and business are failing miserably in terms of mitigating the harm they do with their science and business. We have all sorts of problems we have unleashed because they don’t think about the implications of what they do.

Social media is a notable example. Really cool what we did with the internet all that information so easily available. Lots of high paying jobs etc. But most of the uber rich people driving the bus are science grads who seem more interested in money than anything else. Amazon is a tech triumph but a competition killer. Next up is likely AI. And biological engineering.

I am all for people having good jobs etc. My son is a software engineer. Daughter is in health sciences

We desperately need people equipped to think about how to fix our technologically generated messes. Unfortunately the academy seems to have succumbed to post modernism and seems to have little in the way of answers. I don’t expect the universities to be of much help.

11

My question is: Does anyone really care? Is studying Art even worth it? “It’s not like a REAL JOB” right?

IMHO this is the logical end of two similar trains of thought:
STEM first, second, last, always. Many loud people say STEM is all that matters, people shouldn’t study anything that isn’t STEM. These same people say liberal arts are useless (even though half of STEM are liberal arts)Universities should only be vocational. No classes that fail a ROI question should exist. Nothing that doesn’t exactly lead to a job should exist.

12

But aren’t there plenty of traditional universities that offer BFA degrees to compensate for this? I’m too left brained to understand getting and art degree without at least having a at least a minor like education to fall back on.

13

My question is: Does anyone really care? Is studying Art even worth it? “It’s not like a REAL JOB” right?

IMHO this is the logical end of two similar trains of thought:
STEM first, second, last, always. Many loud people say STEM is all that matters, people shouldn’t study anything that isn’t STEM. These same people say liberal arts are useless (even though half of STEM are liberal arts)Universities should only be vocational. No classes that fail a ROI question should exist. Nothing that doesn’t exactly lead to a job should exist.

Kind of sad trains of thought.

14

And then there are the careers that launch from art school. Not everyone is a starving potter. Think children’s book illustrators, cartoonists, magazine graphic layout designers, interior designers, photographers of all kinds, the creative departments for marketing and Ad companies big and small/local, Etc.

Video game and movie content creation is an enormous industry now.

AI seems like a threat in a way to that sort of thing, but I think it’ll take artistic sensibility and related skills to steer generative AI in the right direction for a particular task.

15

But aren’t there plenty of traditional universities that offer BFA degrees to compensate for this? I’m too left brained to understand getting and art degree without at least having a at least a minor like education to fall back on.

Yes, many state schools offer both BS and BA degrees, sometime for nearly the same subject matter. A BFA degree is a little different, and many schools don’t offer that, but if you really need that level of education for the art, then there are much better choices.

I’m a big proponent of STEM. I not only support it, I teach in that program. That’s not to say there isn’t a place for singers, dancers, and musicians in the world. I moonlight as a professional musician in an event band. We could play as much as we wanted, if we wanted. The other members of the band all formal musical education (I’m the oddball in the group as the bass player who played in the college orchestra years ago). Will this affect the quality of that line of work? I don’t think so in the short term, but it could in 15 or 20 years. Of course, 20 years ago there were far more live bands playing at events. Now you only see them at the high end events. We used to have a lot of competition. Not anymore.

16

And then there are the careers that launch from art school. Not everyone is a starving potter. Think children’s book illustrators, cartoonists, magazine graphic layout designers, interior designers, photographers of all kinds, the creative departments for marketing and Ad companies big and small/local, Etc.

Video game content creation is an enormous industry now.

AI seems like a threat in a way to that sort of thing, but I think it’ll take artistic sensibility and related skills to steer generative AI in the right direction for a particular task.

A friend of ours has a son who was on his way to UArts as an Illustration Major for just that reason

Also, creating Green Screen backgrounds (for MCU movies, as an example)

17

But aren’t there plenty of traditional universities that offer BFA degrees to compensate for this? I’m too left brained to understand getting an art degree without at least having at least a minor like education to fall back on.

That’s why UPenn is not mentioned as one of the Philly schools offering help the displaced students, as they don’t offer a BFA program

http://www.thedp.com/article/2024/06/penn-silent-following-uarts-closure

18

My question is: Does anyone really care? Is studying Art even worth it? “It’s not like a REAL JOB” right?

IMHO this is the logical end of two similar trains of thought:
STEM first, second, last, always. Many loud people say STEM is all that matters, people shouldn’t study anything that isn’t STEM. These same people say liberal arts are useless (even though half of STEM are liberal arts)Universities should only be vocational. No classes that fail a ROI question should exist. Nothing that doesn’t exactly lead to a job should exist.

Hard no. Universities are and have always been a place for people to go to learn more. That’s it. Just because parents want them to be more, doesn’t mean they should be.
What I do think is that Universities should evolve faster and better.

19

Art is everywhere in the physical world. Fabric design, graphic design, textile design, tile design, furniture design, paint colors, wall art, commercial and residential interior design—it seems like most design would need people with a background in art.

I am looking at a quilt my mom finished that was started by my grandmother. It has fabric from the 40s with the 40s fabric prints. I love it.

I have a friend who is a graphic designer. She created stuff for Peter Jennings’ news program (I had no tv growing up/? the network?). She also did graphic design for national commercials—it was one of the big studios. That’s art.

20

My question is: Does anyone really care? Is studying Art even worth it? “It’s not like a REAL JOB” right?

IMHO this is the logical end of two similar trains of thought:
STEM first, second, last, always. Many loud people say STEM is all that matters, people shouldn’t study anything that isn’t STEM. These same people say liberal arts are useless (even though half of STEM are liberal arts)Universities should only be vocational. No classes that fail a ROI question should exist. Nothing that doesn’t exactly lead to a job should exist.

Hard no. Universities are and have always been a place for people to go to learn more. That’s it. Just because parents want them to be more, doesn’t mean they should be.
What I do think is that Universities should evolve faster and better.

And 100% different than 2500 years of higher education theory. Pythagoras argues that higher education was for understanding the world and making good citizens, and that as well as Plato’s Academy, have defined education since ~375BCE