Are museums collecting modern landscapers?

[Kirk Gittings]

"I think of an academic as someone who analyzes and writes about stuff from an objective distance, not a teaching practitioner."

Maybe so if the things being analyzed are able to be measured objectively, such as calculus or chemistry. But much of art, and thus of photography, is purely subjective.

I agree and yet we have art production deeply imbedded in academia as an academic discipline.

[paulr]

There is ongoing conversation about whether or not art-studio counts as academia (and whether an MFA is an academic agree). I've encountered this mostly in the literary world, where there's debate over writing MFA programs. Do they belong in the English department (academic) or the art school (practice)? And what, exactly, is the relationship between the English PhDs and the Writing MFAs?

No one has agreed on an answer to this. Right now the two kinds of programs usually exist side-by-side under the English Dept., with a lot of overlap and also philosophical gaps in the faculty.

[Kirk Gittings]

I know of no university art professors who do not consider themselves part of academia. Some consider their art, pushing boundaries etc, is a form of visual and aesthetic research. As long as I have been seriously interested in photography and art (since I was in high school), art has been part of academia. The difference being-as opposed to just becoming an artist-being the intensive study of art history and theory in conjunction to practicing art in a critical environment.

Can all this be done outside of a university? Of course, but so can architecture, engineering and biology etc. My father was functionally an engineer without any formal training beyond high school. Yet he functioned as an engineer in the Army and then Air Force and later at Sandia National Labs and then private defense contractors.

[Drew Wiley]

Just a point of view concerning the terminology itself, Kirk. My aunt had three phD's, including in art history, taught art history in a NY University among other places and other subjects, probably has more personal work on the Natl Historic Register than even Diego Rivera. But she also taught technique, and was probably the most influential actual teacher of fresco in the 20th C - every aspiring muralist seems to idolize her (I happen to hate most of those old Social Realism murals myself, and vastly prefer her personal watercolors).... But I know damn well, that if anyone called her an "academic" she would have been infuriated. In some circle, that ran directly counter to "hands-on". On the other hand, my dad had to drop out of college to support his younger siblings when his stepfather died. But in the long run, I consider him just as educated as his sister with all those phD's. I think I personally learned far more being pulled out of school for all those family field trips than being in school. Even in the college years I mostly did independent study. And to the end of time I'll be grateful for my Aunt's advice to never attend an art school. My brother did go thru Brooks Insititute, and it was definitely an advantage in terms of commercial photography skills and connections. But
it didn't do a thing for his creative juices. Had to learn those on his own.

[Brian C. Miller]

Yes, museums are collecting landscapers!

I am a landscaper, and I was collected by a museum.

It came for me in the night, when everyone else in my house was asleep. I awoke to soft relaxing music, with gentle Rembrandt lighting streaming in through the windows. I found that I could not move or make any noise, as I was bound up by those soft velvet ropes they use to guide visitors into lines. The ropes, they had wrapped around me like some kind of snake, gagging me and choking me. I was drug outside by the ropes, and into a floating Calder mobile. There were people there, at least I think that's what they were. They wore white overall suits, masks, and gloves. I was entrapped in bubble wrap, and I could not free myself. I struggled when they tried to place me in a crate, but I stopped struggling when I heard someone say, "Shee-it, if'n he don' fit I'll jess git mah chainsaw an' cut him in two. Y'all kin nail him back up when yuh git there."

I don't know how long the trip lasted. It was dark, and hard to breathe in the crate. I finally lapsed into unconciousness. When I awoke, I was already in the exhibit. I was dressed in my work clothes, and there was a lawn rake beside me. There was a barrier, and people looked in at us. I could see some of the letters on the barrier, "t r a e c n a m r o f r e p e m i m".

Initially, I and the others tried to contact the onlookers, but they only stared at us for a while, and then wandered off. We would be fed through a slot if we used our tools as if we were actually doing our jobs. I couldn't hear any sound from outside, and there were no sounds coming through the small ventilation holes. A small "tool shed" hid the toilet. We talked about how we might escape from the prison, but nothing came of it.

Finally after I think three weeks we were let go. I woke up in a corn field in Iowa, all alone. I had to beg and hitchhike back to my family in California. No one would believe me when I told them about my abduction. Nobody would believe that a person could be abducted from their bed. I live in fear of the velvet ropes now. They haunt me, they could come again for me.

[Jac@stafford.net]

...

Sorry. Mistype.

[Kirk Gittings]

geez this is not all that complicated:

definition of an academic.........from the Oxford dictionary.
NOUN

A teacher or scholar in a college or institute of higher education.

academia....
NOUN

The environment or community concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship:
he spent his working life in academia.

[Heroique]

geez this is not all that complicated…

I mostly agree, but it gets a little more complicated when one takes into account secondary meanings (and tertiary meanings, etc.) – and let's not forget historical meanings that can change over time.

For example, I'm curious what your Oxford dictionary lists as the secondary meaning for "academic" (as a noun).

I bet it says something like: "One who is academic is background, outlook, or methods."

That makes Paul an academic, in good company w/ Thoreau.

[Kirk Gittings]

Online it only lists the one definition as a noun.

In my lifetime that is what it has always meant to me.

[Drew Wiley]

Well of course, a prim and proper Oxxxfooord dictionary would give an academic definition like that. It's an academic establishment to begin with. But would a dictionary compiled by Ed Abbey say the same thing?