I hate Art History. Okay, maybe that’s not wholly true, but I do hate things about Art History. I hate the elitists yet wish to go to their universities. I hate the racists, the misogynists, and homophobes, yet I go to their institutions. I hate the barriers...so many barriers: multiple language requirements, professional experience, exemplary knowledge of a particular field, all narrowed down to a few applicants per program per school. However, where there is hate, there too is love. If we were to only love and never acknowledge the hate, or rather what we hate about our field or education, we would never reflect on or try to amend academic wrongdoings. Although I am proud to be an Art History major and owe a large debt of gratitude to the outstanding professors in my school’s (The College of New Jersey) department, there are of course, internal steps we should consider taking if truly we are committed to working towards a more accessible Art History. I hesitate to use the word “ethical'' though, as this conjures subjective definitions of “ethics” and what’s considered ethical to who. For this short essay I will continue to use “accessible” as I believe this term presents a more grounded approach to scholarship. And so, in the following paragraphs I will try to describe my hate and equal passion for this discipline, pose a few potential revisions to current pedagogical approaches to teaching Art History in higher education, all with the hope of showing that performative expressions of discontent (physically or on social media) are not enough. We need to incorporate nuance into our discussions, we need to deconstruct...and maybe even dissent. Proposal #1: Recommendation vs. Requirement - Studying Abroad & Internships For starters, one requirement for Art History majors at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is that we either a) study abroad or b) get an internship. Both of these options, however, pose their own set of challenges. Studying abroad, for example, is a privilege, particularly so at a smaller state university with little funding to subsidize students’ education and travel costs, more on that in a later post. Furthermore, studying abroad is an experience that not all students can fit into their schedule or necessarily feel comfortable doing, and can, furthermore, perpetuate a western-centric idea of art history via the available locations of study and countries students choose to study in. Internships, contrarily, offer undergraduates opportunities to gain unique field experiences in their respective disciplines domestically while also receiving class credit and/or pay. The predicament faced by most undergraduate Art History majors however, is that the programs most beneficial to them are highly competitive and frequently unpaid. For instance, the Frick Collection in New York City, often accepts into their summer program, a mere one to two interns, of which usually do not receive a stipend, but instead receive two unlimited MetroCards (which equates to about $264 for two one-month cards) to “help ease the concerns about living in NYC while participating in an unpaid internship”, discounts at the museum store and cafeteria, and free or discounted admission to “New York’s finest museums”. We therefore are left with a few takeaways. The Frick Collection, a highly prestigious private museum which, according to their 2018-19 annual report, was worth over $401 million in 2019, either cannot set aside funds to pay under 10 interns per year minimum wage or simply chooses not to. Whatever the reason, Art History undergraduates are left to choose whether to “suck it up” and accept an unpaid internship (or volunteer, an alternative and unglorified synonym) from the prestigious Frick Collection with the hopes of benefitting from the museum’s status later in their career or to settle for a job that pays now. My use of the Frick Collection as a single case study is neither to ridicule nor to say they are anomalous, there are plenty of examples out there, one needs just to poke around. See for example: The United Nations, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Art and Design. In my own experience, I began to apply for internships in my sophomore year of college. After receiving several rejections, finally a door opened, I was offered an internship at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. I was told I would have to work 30-35 hours per week, unpaid, and without reimbursement for travel. Though frustrated, I politely declined. Although I knew this internship was unpaid, I of course still applied, thinking, however, I’d maybe be accepted into a program that did pay interns, or that I’d still have time to work outside of the museum. Working unpaid, 30-35 hours per week though is essentially a full-time job, albeit with none of the benefits, besides experience - a word that describes the elitist system that is professional Art History wherein an institution replaces fair payment with status and interns “cash in” years later without or with little expense to the institution they worked for as a college student. The fact of the matter is unfortunately that one needs to come from a place of financial privilege in order to afford the commute and time away from work despite how great of an experience the program they were accepted into may have been. Perhaps then, universities with similar requirements as my own school’s academic program might consider changing their current study abroad and internship requirements into recommendations. Alternatively, universities might be able to provide their own opportunities to students. Although most small liberal arts colleges, my own included, frequently boast that they don’t have Teaching Assistants (TAs), these types of positions can be incredibly valuable to students trying to develop a career in Art History and/or academia. These positions could be paid or treated as an independent study in which the student receives class credit without having to delay other courses or overload, the opportunity is thus built into their transcript. In terms of knowledge assessment, lesson design and creation is the peak of Bloom's taxonomy, therefore the supervising faculty member could assess their undergraduate TA(s) through their lesson plans and their comprehension of their major in turn. Goucher College, a small private university, and Rutgers University, a large state university, employ similar models for their first year students most frequently, who learn from upperclassmen TAs in a sort of “College 101” or Freshmen seminar class. Certainly, these amendments do not address the bigger issue, that being the museums/institutions themselves not paying interns, however this is one step universities can take to protect their students from being exploited by elitist institutions. Proposal #2: The Dunning-Kruger Effect & Art History Surveys There’s an interesting concept in psychology known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Essentially, the Dunning-Kruger effect states that a person who knows little about a topic, practice, or field, has greater levels of confidence and perceptions of mastery than a professional or expert in the same field because the expert has an awareness of how much they still don’t know, and may never know, whereas the novice remains blissfully ignorant in their own naïveté. The image below, from [Better than Yesterday’s] Youtube video on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, depicts a simplified explanation of this concept. Let’s imagine the one on the left, next to the green square, is an amateur photographer and the one on the right, next to the red square, is a professional photographer. Each square symbolizes the photographers’ perceived mastery of the discipline. The one on the left, therefore, perceives themself to be closer to completely mastering photography since the scope of their knowledge of the practice is sparse in comparison to the professional photographer’s. The figure on the right has a much greater understanding of how much they have yet to learn and therefore presents themself as less knowledgeable or confident than the amateur presents themself. Thinking about this phenomenon and the impression Art History surveys may leave on non-majors, I worry that that students walk away from the course thinking the rough sketch they’ve received is all there is to know, especially because traditional Art History surveys are particularly Eurocentric. I wonder then if adopting a guest lecturer approach is a better alternative. Rather than having one professor, in this model, students would be exposed to a variety of guest lecturers (faculty or non-faculty members). Through this approach students would learn from an expert of an particular figure, subject, geographical area and/or time period who could best contextualize their research, and, via the amount of scholars and the specificity of their work, students would hopefully end up in in the latter half of the dunning-Kruger effect, understanding the wide scope of art historical research and its implications. This pedagogical strategy has seen success at Princeton University and the University of Cambridge, however in the latter system students also meet once per week in small cohorts, with a supervisor/professor to discuss the week’s lecture and readings and receive feedback on their weekly paper. Proposal #3: Conference Information Since seeking experience in the field can be a frustrating and frequently fruitless task Art History majors should be prepared to think creatively in order to create their own experiences for their resumes and professional development goals. One way universities, specifically Art History departments though, can help their students to “get their name out” and obtain research experience is to broadcast major and minor conferences with active calls for papers (CFPs). Presenting at conferences looks great both for students, on their resumes and in turn the university they are affiliated with. Additionally, by encouraging students to apply to conferences, may indirectly incentivize and catalyze greater faculty/student collaboration on research projects. Proposal #4: Language Learning Subscriptions An additional way universities and departments can support their students is to offer free subscriptions to language learning applications like Babbel, Rosetta Stone, Duolingo Premium, etc. In order to pursue advanced degrees in Art History nearly all graduate programs want to see that applicants have a strong foundation in German and/or French in addition to the ancient and modern languages needed to conduct their proposed research. If the department offered free subscriptions to apps this would better prepare students applying to graduate school who can’t fit all so many language classes into their schedule. Furthermore this could function as a potential solution to the persistent issue that Classical Studies too has faced. Students from more privileged backgrounds i.e. private schools or classical educations/tutoring, are better prepared and thus are favored during application reviews. By making quality language learning apps accessible to students, we can begin to level the playing field and work towards opening doors to students who typically are underrepresented in Art History and Classical Studies programs. Proposal #5: Create a Departmental Blog My final and last recommendation (for the time being) is that more Art History departments consider creating departmental blogs. This proposal, in fact, was the inspiration for this very blog. News and media are constantly being shared and consumed, therefore the current events projects we knew from grade school, neither match our contemporary lived experience nor does it acknowledge the notion of “the media” as a misleading, conspiring, illuminati-esque entity. And so, there’s a current and growing need for public scholarship. Official scholarly work (i.e journal articles and books) can take years to write and may never even be published. There needs to be a faster outlet to communicate ideas that are very much a part of the moment and a part of the movement. From the viewpoint of professional development, writing in a blog-like space would be a great resume builder for students who choose to be involved. More importantly though, a peer-reviewed blog, would provide students and faculty members, especially Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and other students and faculty of color, with a virtual platform to talk about Art History in an academic setting while also reaching a greater audience within and beyond predominantly academic circles. For university purposes, this space would primarily be used by Art History majors and minors as a platform for students to share their research, discuss current and long-standing art historical issues, and bring scholars (undergraduates included) into the forefront of academic discourse under the protection of a university. This component of the blog, university protection, is particularly important and equally challenging. Sarah Bond, Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa was met with death threats and countless verbal attacks from white supremacists after publishing an article in her column in Forbes about whitewashing and the use of color in Greco-Roman statuary and architecture. In order to protect both academic freedom and the freedoms of speech and press, universities need to be willing to both not shy away from holding critical conversations and to stand behind their students and faculty, within reason. Conclusion: Clearly then, I don’t actually hate Art History, but rather would hate to see the profession and its pedagogical approaches stagnate, or worse, regress. I hope this essay proposed several viable revisions that universities and Art History departments can consider incorporating as they continue to evolve. Further Reading: Ten Proposals for a More Ethical Art History: an undergraduate perspective by Emily Clark History is not a plant: Some thoughts on high school and undergraduate (ancient) history curricula by Sarah Bond Report: White Supremacy and the Past and Future of Classics Roundtable Towards the Ethical Practice of Art History by Karen Overbey Contributor: Ryan Abramowitz Comments are closed.
|
Contributors:Ryan Abramowitz, Senior Art History Major at The College of New Jersey |