The "Art" School is Dead

[Alan Klein]

A conversation overheard between Timmy, a 17-year-old and his father.

"Dad, I want to get my MFA degree in photography and film and become great like Ansel Adams or Steven Spielberg. But I need you to chip in about $35,000 a semester for school."

"Hmmm. Well, Timmy. I'm not too sure about that. When mom and I bought you that Nikon for your birthday to shoot pictures at Aunt Sallie's wedding, not one shot came out in focus. Maybe you should take up bronc riding or another physical skill rather than depending on your artistic skills?"

"Well, Dad, if photography doesn't work out for me, I could switch my major to oil painting and become a great artist like Picasso."

[Kirk Gittings]

“Art schools” as in MFA programs are booming. You can’t beat people away with a stick even though it is a flawed model for teaching and/or learning art.

[Drew Wiley]

Although I've often been an outspoken critic of art schools for learning art per se, there is a distinction with schools which teach vocational photography. My own brother went to Brooks back in its heyday, and it was expensive; but he got a lot of good connections there and actually made a decent income in commercial and stock photography afterwards, at least until an underlying heart condition began to affect his eyesight. The well known SF Art Academy stressed vocational applications. Sure, plenty of hobby types went there too; and what probably drove it to extinction was more likely the extreme rise in property leasing expense in that city rather than lack of interest.

A young guy who once swept floors where I worked wanted to get into a commercial art & photo, so took digital imaging courses at UC Davis, put together a portfolio of black and white film images darkroom-printed with a bit of coaching from me, and also added some decent hand-done fashion illustration work. The first job he got was with the Ad Dept of a major corporation for over 200K a year. Not bad for someone only 22 year old! What they were impressed with was how he was versatile and capable of learning new things. Digital-only "one trick pony" illustrators are dime a dozen and have to get routinely re-educated anyway, just to keep up with all the ongoing technological advances. With him, flexibility in approach was obvious from the start, even though he might not have been great at any single slice of the pie. The ability to be adaptable was far more important to them.

[Tin Can]

Still deader

Robots

My MFA was on Student Loans

23 years ago

[Kirk Gittings]

Mine was free, a full ride, one of the best experiences of my life.

But my favorite experience was helping my ex assistant, Zig Jackson, with his his career. A wonderful hard working poor Mandan Indian guy who went to The San Francisco Art Institute for his MFA, on to teach at SCAD, become a Professor Emeritus and get a Guggenheim.

[jnantz]

as someone who went back as a non-20something year old person during before and during the pandemic, I can tell you from recent and first hand experience art schools are anything but dead, and there are a handful of excellent MFA in photography programs ... with some students to be there in person the whole time, others are "low-res" ( low residency ) programs where students go for a long intensive time a couple of times a years to receive their degrees. ( it kind of reminded me of my mentor who did correspondence school in the Great Depression at NYSOP and had to go to NYC for a month in person to do her "retouching module" where she said she hung out with the surrealists and had beer and mutton with them) I lucked out because I commuted to my school, so I wasn't marooned 6,000 miles away from home like some of my classmates, I have years of experience over some of my cohort / counterparts, and a local place to make photographs (comes with the privilege of having a darkroom ). So, during lockdown, I helped classmates who didn't have UV lights by giving a spare set up I had so they could make their albumen prints, or whatever. I also lucked out because the school discounted the price per class because of the pandemic and because distance / zoom learning had not been done in in the past and everyone was new at it ... so the tuition was even more affordable than it would have been. I taught classes / TA'd classes via zoom, had juries via zoom, met with visiting artists and lecturers person to person via zoom, and was surrounded by armloads of creative people, and world class artists+teachers ( Sally Mann, and Duane Michals et al. ) which was humbling and inspiring ... It was one of the best experiences of my life. It's funny, in the 23 years I have been reading posts on this board ( and others where I don't go anymore but there is membership overlap ) there has been a loud vocal hatred and contempt towards people who are educated, and it gets old after a while, so old that I typically have a handful of people on ignore. The sad thing is the memberships say uninformed and misguided things as if it is from some edited and published journal, and people that read these things forget that like everything else, it is just OPINION and not the truth ( and it is far from the truth ). ... but that's the time we live in, everyone's voice is equal weighted, even if it is devoid of experience or based in fact.

[faberryman]

It's funny, in the 23 years I have been reading posts on this board ( and others where I don't go anymore but there is membership overlap ) there has been a loud vocal hatred and contempt towards people who are educated, and it gets old after a while, so old that I typically have a handful of people on ignore. The sad thing is the memberships say uninformed and misguided things as if it is from some edited and published journal, and people that read these things forget that like everything else, it is just OPINION and not the truth ( and it is far from the truth ). ... but that's the time we live in, everyone's voice is equal weighted, even if it is devoid of experience or based in fact.

I dare say many of the opponents to art and photography school have never had any formal education in art, art history, or photography. Perhaps they have never even attended a photography workshop. They have never had the experience and have no idea what they are talking about. Why would anyone listen to someone without the requisite experience?

[Tin Can]

Perhaps you don't know me, I know you dislike me

I was denied all ART from very young

I dropped out of college 1970, as I won the Draft Lottery, but failed the Army Induction Physical

I worked many jobs, USPS from age 16 then Sales, all automotive work, factories

Age 45 went to Jr College, then real college, then entered ARTIC for 2 years to Masters of Art, Performance aka Live Art

All the time working as many hours double and triple time as Foreman

Got real sick, got better.

My REAL art is nearly invisible, as it is 1 on 1, person to person. Empath

I use that word carefully as I know how malleable minds are

I like making pictures as hobby

Very Intense Hobby

I dare say many of the opponents to art and photography school have never had any formal education in art, art history, or photography. Perhaps they have never even attended a photography workshop. They have never had the experience and have no idea what they are talking about. Why would anyone listen to someone without the requisite experience?

[jnantz]

I dare say many of the opponents to art and photography school have never had any formal education in art, art history, or photography. Perhaps they have never even attended a photography workshop. They have never had the experience and have no idea what they are talking about. Why would anyone listen to someone without the requisite experience?

No kidding, if they had a pedigree and info on their CV maybe I'd believe a what they say / said. I think its about time we start another "what is art" / "what is photography" thread.

[Pieter]

No kidding, if they had a pedigree and info on their CV maybe I'd believe a what they say / said. I think its about time we start another "what is art" / "what is photography" thread.

And who are you or anyone else here to say what is art? Even the so-called experts, curators, gallerists and critics can't do that. History may be the only authority on the subject. So let's fire up the time machine.