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unitednationsplaza free school Berlin 2006-07 > SPECIALISSUE principles: ‘The responsibility of education’ he argues, ‘is to illuminate not reflect’. While highly critical of management structures within the new universities, Maria Walsh is almost alone in finding much to celebrate in contemporary art education when compared with the ‘not-so-good old days’. Not least among these is the goal of ‘widening participation’, despite the fact that, as she points out, ‘increasingly high fees make the latter catchword risible and actually encourage the kind of bourgeois romantic individualism traditionally – and still – associated with studying art’. And whereas Smith would like to propose dropping the dissertation from the curriculum altogether, Walsh argues that theory, far from being ‘an unnecessary burden’ on students, actually empowers them. Finally, she even puts in a good word for the dreaded the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), making the important point that the process generates a sense of belonging to a wider educational community and, cycnicism aside, makes for a more ‘dynamic’ academic environment, though one can’t help wondering about the quality of that environment if it has to be stimulated by an external, government directed agency. Paul Wood’s contribution to the debate is taken from his introduction to a chapter he has written for the forthcoming bookHistory of British Art, in which he admirably summarises the situation in which we now find ourselves: ‘They say you should be wary of desire lest you are granted that which you wish for. The elevation of modular over linear teaching programmes, the educational incorporation of theory, the breakdown of modernist medium-specificity, the critique of the (mostly male) expressive author, perhaps even a questioning of the authority of the western canon, were all songs in our radical repertoire. Yet the fact that these have come to pass, and now count if not as the norm, then as significant components of a contemporary education in art and design, has counted in the end for less than the fact that the underlying structure (and of course, the wider structure-beyond-the-structure) has remained intact.’ And yet, as Walsh maintains, these achievements are not nothing, so why does such success feel like ashes? As Wood suggests, one reason is that the underlying structure remains intact, but another may be that in addressing these issues we have all been dragged away ‘from the difficult inspirational thing we worked so hard to build up’ in the first place. Let’s hope it is not too late. ❚ PATRICIABICKERS is editor of Art Monthlyand is principal lecturer in history and theory of art, department of mixed media fine art, school of media art & design, University of Westminster. Heather & Ivan Morison The opposite of all those things 27 September - 8 November 2008 GRUNDY ART GALLERY Queen Street, Blackpool, FY1 1PX. t: 01253 478170 e: grundyartgallery@blackpool.gov.uk w: www.blackpool.gov.uk/grundyartgallery Admission is free. Open Monday to Saturday, including Bank Holidays, 10am to 5pm. Closed Sundays. 10.08/ ARTMONTHLY /320 3

unitednationsplaza free school Berlin 2006-07

> SPECIALISSUE

principles: ‘The responsibility of education’ he argues, ‘is to illuminate not reflect’. While highly critical of management structures within the new universities, Maria Walsh is almost alone in finding much to celebrate in contemporary art education when compared with the ‘not-so-good old days’. Not least among these is the goal of ‘widening participation’, despite the fact that, as she points out, ‘increasingly high fees make the latter catchword risible and actually encourage the kind of bourgeois romantic individualism traditionally – and still – associated with studying art’. And whereas Smith would like to propose dropping the dissertation from the curriculum altogether, Walsh argues that theory, far from being ‘an unnecessary burden’ on students, actually empowers them. Finally, she even puts in a good word for the dreaded the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), making the important point that the process generates a sense of belonging to a wider educational community and, cycnicism aside, makes for a more ‘dynamic’ academic environment, though one can’t help wondering about the quality of that environment if it has to be stimulated by an external, government directed agency. Paul Wood’s contribution to the debate is taken from his introduction to a chapter he has written for the forthcoming bookHistory of British Art, in which he admirably

summarises the situation in which we now find ourselves: ‘They say you should be wary of desire lest you are granted that which you wish for. The elevation of modular over linear teaching programmes, the educational incorporation of theory, the breakdown of modernist medium-specificity, the critique of the (mostly male) expressive author, perhaps even a questioning of the authority of the western canon, were all songs in our radical repertoire. Yet the fact that these have come to pass, and now count if not as the norm, then as significant components of a contemporary education in art and design, has counted in the end for less than the fact that the underlying structure (and of course, the wider structure-beyond-the-structure) has remained intact.’ And yet, as Walsh maintains, these achievements are not nothing, so why does such success feel like ashes? As Wood suggests, one reason is that the underlying structure remains intact, but another may be that in addressing these issues we have all been dragged away ‘from the difficult inspirational thing we worked so hard to build up’ in the first place. Let’s hope it is not too late. ❚

PATRICIABICKERS is editor of Art Monthlyand is principal lecturer in history and theory of art, department of mixed media fine art, school of media art & design, University of Westminster.

Heather & Ivan Morison The opposite of all those things 27 September - 8 November 2008

GRUNDY ART GALLERY

Queen Street, Blackpool, FY1 1PX. t: 01253 478170 e: grundyartgallery@blackpool.gov.uk w: www.blackpool.gov.uk/grundyartgallery Admission is free. Open Monday to Saturday, including Bank Holidays, 10am to 5pm. Closed Sundays.

10.08/ ARTMONTHLY /320

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