François-Auguste Biard, Quatre heures, au Salon. (Fermeture du Salon annuel de peinture, alors partiellement installé dans la Grande Galerie du Louvre), 1847
As a current PhD student in Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology, I had some thoughts upon hearing the remarks President Obama made during last Thursday’s speech in Wisconsin, as reported by Politico:
The president highlighted the benefits of vocational training, joking that it might serve young adults better than a degree in art history.
“A lot of young people no longer see the trades and skilled manufacturing as a viable career, but I promise you, folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree,” Obama said.
“Nothing wrong with art history degree,” he added. “I love art history. I don’t want to get a bunch of emails from everybody. I’m just saying, you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education, as long as you get the skills and training that you need.”
I imagine his tone here was light-hearted and populist, and I’m guessing that the choice to name art history specifically was probably spontaneous. Still, his remarks are being taken seriously: the College Art Association (the professional network of artists and art historians working in American academia) has already put out a call to flood the White House with emails. Others have pointed out that the art world is a considerable part of the American economy, and that art history majors, unlike, say, philosophy majors, graduate with skills that directly translate into jobs at places like galleries and auction houses (though I would retort that too many of these jobs are part-time or low-paying, and most of the economic value generated by the art world really goes to the 1%.) Frankly, I don’t think any of the responses I’ve seen offer a particularly compelling defense of art history, especially on economic grounds.
Let me preface my own response by saying that for the past few years, I’ve been teaching Columbia’s Core Curriculum class “Art Humanities: Masterpieces of Western Art,” commonly known as “Art Hum.” Every undergrad at Columbia College—presumably including President Obama—has had to take a form of this visual literacy class since 1947, though its roots go back to the foundation of the Core in the 1930s. Admittedly, the class is notorious; I once heard from a source in the Core office that upon graduating, Columbia seniors report that Art Hum was the most expendable of all their classes. In a follow-up survey decades later, however, Columbia alumni report that the class that has had the most impact on their lives is…Art Hum. Though perhaps apocryphal, this story is great material for the first day of class each semester: “You may hate this now,” I tell my students, “but just wait thirty years, and you’ll thank me.”
The joke works because my students don’t hate Art Hum. I think this is partly because at the start of every semester, I explain to them why the class matters. Now, I never imagined I would want to deliver the same lecture to the leader of the free world…but I also never imagined he would make my discipline—and implicitly the humanities in toto—a foil in his rhetoric on job training and growing the economy.
Before I articulate my reasoning, let me acknowledge that higher education is broken. Teaching young people that a four-year degree is the only avenue to success—irrespective of the cost, their job prospects, or the state of the economy—has begun to create a large population of Americans who are indentured to their educational debt for the rest of their lives. (The problem here is the rising cost of a college education, as many people more knowledgeable than I on this issue have discussed in a range of public forums.) But I’m concerned that encouraging students to pursue their short-term economic needs over the enrichment of a liberal arts education (however diluted and problematic the liberal arts model has become) will lead to a deeper entrenchment of class divisions and the further erosion of the American dream. Conveniently enough, a recent report adds to the evidence that a liberal arts education is still the best way to maximize your long-term earning potential.
I am not insensitive to the fact that eschewing a pre-professional or vocational training program for a liberal arts education is almost always an economic privilege, and that inversely, short-term financial imperatives are what compel most young people into, say, skilled manufacturing. Who am I to tell someone that taking out loans while also forgoing a full-time income is the right choice for them? (Admittedly, I’m reminded of the advice I once heard about getting a doctorate in the humanities: if you have to pay a lot to get your degree—that is, if you’re not funded by your school or independently wealthy—it’s never worth it.) But if we’re debating how to encourage economic mobility—which is what President Obama’s comment was really about—why should we discount the importance of the arts, when we know how closely financial and cultural capital are intertwined?
To wit: The leaders of Columbia still think a knowledge of the arts is important enough to make it a requirement for all the future leaders that pass through its halls. Why can’t we offer that same opportunity to everyone, while acknowledging the reality of economic inequality? Maybe President Obama is right that majoring in art history or another liberal arts field isn’t for everybody—but wouldn’t it be a powerful expression of the democratic ideals of this country if we expected everyone, no matter their background or employment future, to at least be exposed to the humanities in a few classes? (I suppose high schools used to provide a kind of universal education in the humanities, but I think they might be too busy teaching STEM courses and preparing students for standardized tests to do that work well now.) Do we really want to tell some people—especially ones from the least privileged backgrounds—that we have so little faith in their economic prospects, that we won’t even hold them to the same standards we hold students aspiring to middle-class white-collar jobs? Why make immediate economic gain mutually exclusive with the acquisition of the cultural capital that can open more doors for more students in the long run?
Whether we like the culture of the economic elites, and really want to encourage people to participate in it, is a very good question that has to be asked. In Art Hum, I certainly try to help students see how high art normalizes and perpetuates assumptions about, for example, gender and race, with real-world consequences. But again, Obama’s comment was about helping people achieve economic mobility, and like him, I’m working under the assumption that our priority is for more people to become economically and socially enfranchised, because not having food or housing or health insurance are real problems–and besides, I think the only way we can change hegemonic culture is from within.
In a nutshell, an education in the humanities gives students access to cultural capital (among its other benefits, like enriching our lives), while the four-year liberal arts degree provides the learning skills that increase a student’s long-term earning potential. A degree in art history—or even just a class—offers these same economic advantages, and also has a specific value of its own: though our world used to be dominated by the dissemination of text, our society is increasingly dominated by visual modes of communication. In the coming years, it’s likely that visual literacy will become a key skill, alongside textual literacy, for workers throughout our economy. This is why it’s important for President Obama to understand that art historians don’t simply teach the historical development of artistic styles; more critically, we teach people how to look at images. I don’t think he would make a public statement against teaching our children to read…so why should he implicitly ridicule teaching people how to read images, when images are now as important as text in the construction of our common culture?
It’s especially worrisome for a politician, of all people, to casually dismiss the very field most responsible for training American citizens in visual literacy (now that the arts are all but banished from high school curricula). Political campaigns and culture wars alike are now waged through images as much as through soundbites—just ask Michael Dukakis. An informed electorate has to know how to decode visual information: not just art history majors, but all Americans, should learn how to read images. In other words, I want to tell everyone in Obama’s audience in Wisconsin the same thing I told my Art Hum students last month, on our first day of class: Yes, your education should be a stepping stone to your career. But while you’re here, I also want you to learn to look, so that you can become more responsible citizens, and help make this country one I actually want to raise kids in someday. No pressure!
Tags: art, art history, education, politics, tina rivers
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Tina, from the bottom of my art/art history undergrad and historic preservation/architectural history graduate degree-having-heart, all of my love.
Thanks 🙂 I don’t want to presume to speak for “all of us” with degrees in art history or related fields, but I’m so glad it resonated with you!
I also highly doubt that most art history majors actually expect to land a job in a museum or gallery, except maybe at a handful of elite schools. Most of the humanities students I know, myself included, were either hoping to get into secondary education, or to find a white-collar job where the degree itself mattered more than the major. That was what our parents did and it’s not a completely outdated idea– I graduated two years ago and I write to you know from my pretty-good desk job, which has nothing at all to do with my history degree. I’m glad that I got to spend four (okay, five) years reading about stuff I liked before settling into a job where I don’t get to do that all too often. And I hate the idea that nineteen-year-olds should be committing their entire college experience to the field they wish to work in, as if any of them has any idea.
Yeah, a lot of the advice I got as a college student was that your future job would just require a college degree, any college degree, so you might as well study something you liked or found interesting. (Granted, this was just BEFORE the economic meltdown…..)
Anyway, this article was great and I completely agree that being able to think critically about visual media is a very important skill!
As a nineteen year old who watches her friends being slowly crushed by their parents/societal expectations/ fear of unemployment into STEM fields, I really freakin’ agree.
Thank you. I majored in Global Studies, not Art History (with a minor in Philosophy – hey ooooh impractical economic choices!)
I now work at a software company doing project management, and before that I taught high school in world languages and other subjects. I will probably do other things before I am done. And you know what? My very broad liberal-arts-y background did an excellent job preparing me for a world in which I need to constantly learn new things, and am often thrown into tasks I never studied. I hate that people think the liberal arts are not good for anything. Most young people today will career change several times over their lives; I worry we are abandoning a broad-based educational approach just when that model may be most relevant to students.
My struggle to learn a non-Latin language in college have made me much faster when trying to learn the grammar of object-oriented programming languages. Having taken formal logic courses in my philosophy classes very strongly prepared me for coding. It was NOT wasted time, even in terms of practical skills. I may never convince anyone else of the value those fields added to my current studies in software development, but I just think thoughtful learning is intrinsically interdisciplinary.
Of course, part of me sympathizes with Obama’s comments, because I STRUGGLED to find my first and second jobs after graduating, and I know part of that is that the liberal arts and humanities garner far less respect on the entry level job market. I look at my student loans and think, “I could have read about international conflicts on my own time…” In the end though, I’m pretty confident that the path I took was a valid one.
An informed electorate has to know how to decode visual information: not just art history majors, but all Americans, should learn how to read images.
I never thought about it this way but that’s a really good point. Any ideas about improving visual literacy without taking a class? I… mostly just read a lot of comics.
Ashleigh–that is SUCH a good question!
There are two books you might want to check out: Joshua C. Taylor’s “Learning to Look,” and Sylvan Barnet’s “A Short Guide to Writing About Art” (which, contrary to its title, is also a guide to looking at art). I draw a lot from these two texts at the start of my Art Hum classes.
Awesome! I’ll look into those for sure.
Also, if you read a lot of comics, you might enjoy Scott McCloud’s classic “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.”
I dunno Barnet’s to me is the wrong place to send someone who’s just getting started. It’s stodgy and gives no critical context. It’s great if you’re trying to learn to write a formal analysis for a college course, but less so for anything else. It’s a bit goofy, but John Berger’s specials “Ways of Seeing” for the BBC is available free online and gives a pretty interesting introduction to contemporary (in 1972) issues of Art History. http://vimeo.com/51354092
Thanks for prompting me to clarify: if you’re looking at Barnet, you really probably want to look at the bits on the questions to ask in front of different kinds of art (there are pages and pages on how to approach paintings vs. sculptures vs. buildings vs. photographs). That said, I didn’t qualify my original posting because I also think that the bits on writing about art are also instructive, as they help you learn to reason clearly about art 🙂
Art history PhD Student here. Visual literacy takes time to learn, just like reading. It involves learning the grammar of visual composition, just like you learned to construct sentences in middle school language arts. Maybe the easiest (and cheapest) way to get some vis lit in without enrolling in a course would be to find out when your local art museum is free and take a curator-guided tour. Many local museums are staffed by knowledgeable docents who very skillfully tell you about specific works of art. Sometimes they are art historians with master’s or PhDs. Look at enough art and you’ll start to recognize patterns. Eventually, especially if you take a formal class, you’ll be able to relate any image you see to others you’ve seen as well as a general visual language like a specific style or even artist. Hey, look, you’re reading art!
I agree it’s a good place to start, but my frustration with a lot of museum education departments could fill another article. (I don’t hold them entirely accountable for their problems: with government support for museums drying up, they’re under pressure to provide “infotainment” that often sacrifices edification for entertainment, since the powers-that-be think that’s what draws and retains audiences. Hence, the increasingly common phenomenon of museums hosting dance parties, singles nights, etc…) I once went on a tour at a *very* highly-regarded museum, and literally, the degree of interaction facilitated by the docent boiled down to: “Do you like the color blue? So did this artist!” (This is not to slam all museums: I underwent *wonderful* training as a docent at the ICA Boston.) In short, I don’t fully trust museums to do the work of educating the public, which is why having exposure to arts appreciation/visual literacy in high school or college is so critical.
I don’t think one bad experience at a museum is a reason to discourage people to go there to start learning to look. I said cheapest and easiest, not best. I absolutely agree that a visual literacy course is important for any broader understanding.
And I know some Art Ed people who would be pretty incensed by your comment. They may not be writing for October all the time, but they do good work in the museum too.
ArtyFarty, I started my comment by saying “I agree it’s a good place to start”–so I don’t think it’s fair to characterize my response as “discouraging people to go there to start learning to look” (?!). I also didn’t just have one bad experience; I’ve had many. And not that you would know this, but I’ve seen/worked on the insides of more than one museum education department, so I’m actually kinda speaking AS an Art Ed person–I’m not trying to throw stones at any other fields (as you point out, many people working in museum ed departments have MAs and PhDs in art history, so I don’t even think making a distinction between fields makes sense). Finally, I know it’s easy for art historians to use “October” as an epithet amongst themselves (and unless I read you incorrectly, I think you’re using it to accuse me of elitism?), but I don’t imagine it will mean much to the other Toasties (and of course, I object to your accusation, but if you interpret my comments as elitist, then I hope you’ll consider that it’s not because I am, but because I wasn’t able to communicate my position on this complex subject with sufficient nuance).
The Humanities are what make life worth living. That other stuff is just vocational training.
Absolutely! But unfortunately, that argument doesn’t seem to go very far with a lot of people who, for example, control the federal budget, and there is also the question of how people are supposed to MAKE a living. (You can’t live on art alone…) I couldn’t agree with you more, but I hope I was able to provide a different line of reasoning for those who aren’t convinced of the merits of the humanities in and of themselves…
I think a large part of the problem is that it’s very difficult to get any job these days without very specific, almost vocational training. University degree programs are working with industry to develop curricula tailor-made to the needs of industry, so that degree-holders are essentially ready for the workplace the day after graduation. The onus of job training has shifted to the university, partly due to automation, partly due to the fact that it’s an economically sound investment on the part of industry.
This is overgeneralizing a bit, but in the past, you could get a degree in a humanities field and count on the fact that you earned a degree to get your foot in the door, then train for a job while working at a company. Now, companies have 100 resumes on their desks for people pre-trained for the position.
That’s a good point and illuminates why education is such a thorny subject: Is the goal of our educational system to prepare young people for productive employment? Is it to provide young people with the framework to be good world citizens? Is it to enable them to be self-sufficient? Is it some combination of all three and if so, what percentage of resources go to each goal?
I bet if you asked 100 different people you’d get 100 different answers. We can’t really reach a consensus about what topics are important if we’re not in agreement about what our goals are.
THIS. Totally. And I guess what bothers me is the implication, latent in Obama’s comments, that the answer would be different for people of different classes. In trying to figure out what “the goal of our educational system” should be, I don’t want to ignore certain realities–some people are poorer than others, some people are smarter than others, etc.–but it’d be great if we all agreed that our system should at least set out to level the playing field…
I would like to write an extensive comment about how important the study of art history and visual culture is to me (though I have my reservations about the Great White Western Canon) but I have to go to four hours of art history classes! Maybe someone will still be reading this at 5?
I will! 🙂 And I would love to hear what you have to say. The more arguments us art historians have in our collective arsenal, the better.
I don’t know. I completely agree that the humanities are worth learning (because, duh appreciation of life), and especially as a form of
economiccultural mobility. Knowing art history is definitely a form of cultural capital and to be in the know really helps signal to people that you are: knowledgeable, elite, sophisticated, etc. I wouldn’t want to deny people this entry point either (I myself have spent the last year trying to build my understanding of art because I have felt culturally excluded from the upper-middle class / elite world I’m entering through my field of work).BUT that’s part of the problem for me. Allowing the “Great White Western Canon”, as a commenter mentioned above, to be the entry point. This enforces the class divisions the author mentions–it sets up a space where knowing *this* kind of art is important, and it ignores the possibility of a different kind of study of art, one that is more populist maybe. I guess I’m just put off by what is considered art and what isn’t, and who gets studied and why at formal education institutions.
The author says “the only way we can change hegemonic culture is from within.” And usually I agree. Even in this case, I agree. But there is something to be said of creating your own cultural capital–which I think many people have–and changing the hegemonic culture by not participating in it, by not giving it the importance it thinks it deserves.
I think I’m rambling, and I’m not sure I’ve made a coherent point. I don’t agree with Obama’s dismissal of an entire field of study, but I do think that he is trying (and imo, failing) to create a more communitarian (not egalitarian, mind you) country–he wants to emphasize shared values between class as he effects positive rights (ACA, mortgage stuff) that set the stage for a more community minded place. Ok end ramble.
i totally agree. and it’s very problematic to say, ‘okay, g’bye Great White Western Canon,’ and instead start teaching, say, Ghanaian court drumming as though it’s equivalent to a Beethoven symphony. not to say Ghanaian court drumming is less complex (sonically or socially) or less deserving of scholarly inquiry or criticism or celebration than a Beethoven symphony, but simply recognizing that they serve very different functions in their respective contexts, and that perhaps it’s inappropriate to force one into the mold left empty by the other’s disposal.
put another way, a pedagogy of the humanities that strives to be anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist, populist, queer etc. might require we do away with categories like “the humanities.”
I agree with you guys here. I think the biggest unexamined issue here is the author’s branding of herself as not just as art historian, but as a teacher at Columbia which add an extra smidge of privilege.I see she’s defended the Top Forty approach and critiqued it, which is all commendable and true. But the crucial issue here is that art history shouldn’t just be for the ivies, but rather, as discussed below, a program of visual literacy to prepare students for an increasingly visually saturated world. Literacy doesn’t have to mean familiarity with every “masterpiece” (can’t believe they can even get away with that word, it’s been so undone by post-structuralism.)
The concept of visual culture over art is helpful here. I insist on it. Any art historian who isn’t teaching commercial art, architecture, design, folk art, in short bits of the whole visual world ignored by survey texts, isn’t worth their salt. Sorry, Strong Feelings up in here.
Couldn’t agree more that visual culture is critically important (and just so you know I mean it–I received my MA from the Visual Studies program at UCI, and I’ve written about films, video games, and magazines as well as fine art). And I hope my article made clear that I absolutely think art and visual literacy should be for all Americans, not just Ivy League students.
I don’t think you were rambling, and I know for sure you were making a coherent point 🙂 I totally understand your objection to Art Hum’s tacit endorsement of the “Great White Western Canon.” The Core Curriculum was founded on the principle that there are certain texts and objects with which our students must become familiar in order to fully participate in our society; while our mission is to teach those texts/objects, I would venture that most Core instructors today recognize that the masculine, heterosexual, white, European world that those texts/objects reflect is outdated, to say the least. To that end, many Art Hum instructors supplement the “official” curriculum with units devoted to female or LGBT or non-white artists (and I should note that Columbia created other Art Hum options, such as Masterpieces of Indian Art, precisely to address this concern). Personally, I end with a class I call “‘Masterpieces’ of ‘Western’ ‘Art,'” using the quotation marks to foreground the instability of the terms around which the class was built. (Also, throughout the semester, I bring in works by artists such as Yinka Shonibare MBE to help my students discuss the contested legacy of the Western tradition.) But while I totally agree that we should be questioning the canon, I also want my students to be prepared for a world that is still very much indebted to it, for better or for worse, and I still think it’s important for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds to become familiar with these works, for their own short-term benefit. You’re so right that “not participating” in hegemonic culture is a powerful option–but I also think that refusing to participate is a privilege that not everyone can afford.
I’m glad you mentioned privilege again, because I was thinking about that too–that even the choice to opt out is a CHOICE for some, and not for others.
(I’ve also been thinking about privilege a lot today b/c of the Black Girl Dangerous post on doing more than just acknowledging privilege.)
Thanks for responding!
The idea of “create your own cultural capital” really resonates with me. When I was a freshman, I took two separate literature-ish classe. One was freshman writing, but packaged to appeal to non-English-majors as “Science Fiction”. We read various science fiction works, and wrote essays about them. It was in this class that I first read both Ursula LeGuin and Kurt Vonnegut, much to my enrichment. I’m pretty sure neither of them are in anybody’s Core. But I love them both dearly.
The other class was an upper-division Russian Lit in English. We read texts that were definitely canonical, including “Crime and Punishment”. I remember mentioning to one of the other students in this class how much I liked LeGuin, and I recall quite vividly the sniff of backhanded dismissal, “Yes, I understand she’s achieved great things for a genre writer.”
That was a defining moment for me, the moment I decided I wasn’t going to let any snob tell me what was good and what wasn’t. There is no such thing as a Great Book, only books that you, or I, think are great.
As a Trekkie from childhood, I definitely think science fiction is an incredibly rich body of literature (and one of my literature professors in college must’ve agreed, since he put Samuel Delany and LeGuin and Vonnegut on our syllabus). But I just want to clarify that while we can certainly decide that we prefer to read things that are not in The Canon, there is no such thing as “creating your own cultural capital.” You can participate in sub- or counter-cultures, like I did when I went to Star Trek conventions; and in some sense, you can create your own culture (write your own books, make your own music, etc.). But “cultural capital” refers to the forms of culture that are associated with, or open the doors to, economic privilege (such as being able to talk about classical music at an after-work event, or knowing which fork to use first at a formal dinner party); in other words, cultural capital is that culture which society as a whole has agreed “belongs to the rich.” No single person can redefine or create cultural capital. As an individual, you CAN decide that you don’t care about participating in elite culture/accumulating cultural capital…but as I pointed out in an earlier comment, the decision to not participate is often a luxury that some people can’t afford. I would also add that it’s still important to go through The Canon at least once, even if you never return to it, as so much of everything that isn’t in The Canon is actually informed by it, or departs from it in deliberate, meaningful ways.
I love this, even as someone who went to school first for a creative writing degree and then went into computer science because the writing program was just too fluffy and silly (I did learn some good things from them though.) I just want to say that: with all the focus on STEM education, it’s sad that we still don’t turn out many good scientists ANYWAY. We’re cutting art and other programs and not getting much benefit from it. We don’t seem to be doing much right in education at all. I’m just grateful that I was able to go to high quality public schools that valued art and literature as well as STEM and I wish that everyone had that opportunity.
I’m sorry, I would be remiss if I didn’t address something in your comment. The U.S. turns out TONS of good scientists. Too many, in fact, for the job market to bear. Especially in areas like biomedical science, there is a glut of Ph.D. scientists and not enough open jobs for them. I agree that there’s too much emphasis on STEM education, but that’s definitely not because we’re not producing excellent scientists.
Ah, fair point, I didn’t express myself clearly at all and thanks for calling that out. There are fewer jobs for research/laboratory scientists, etc., and the idea that a Phd in one of those fields (except perhaps in physics) is no guarantee of a job in your field. However, there are fields that are not in the liberal arts/creative fields, like computer science, any of the various engineering fields, medical doctors, nurses, and any number of fields that require a technical education that have openings. I mean, it’s hard at times to even find quality technical writers. I would say, rather, that despite the emphasis on STEM education the majority of people are not receiving a quality education in terms of science, technology and mathematics, and that although we may have more than enough Ph.D’s we lack people at other levels.
I assure you a degree in physics is no guarantee of an academic or technical job in physics, especially if you do theoretical physics (since there’s no lab work and thus no lab techs). We’re suffering from the same overproduction of PhD grads as other STEM disciplines — perhaps even more so than some other fields. I suspect the relative proportion of people who get a BSc in physics and continue to a PhD is higher in physics than in many other fields, though I have only anecdotal evidence of this.
My understanding was that the ratio of Ph.D.’s to potential jobs was still better in physics than in biology and chemistry? But maybe that’s not the case anymore, or the ratio is still so bad that it doesn’t make sense?
Depends what’s grouped under potential jobs — lots of physics people end up in financial/risk assement type jobs because of their mathy problem solving background. Academic jobs are hard to come by regardless of field — I’m not sure if, once you get a PhD, it’s harder to get postdocs/adjunct positions/TT positions in physics than in other places. My point was that relatively speaking, there are more people getting through to the PhD level in physics than in other fields (though this is highly anecdotal on my part, and may not hold up beyond the few unis that I have a sense of) and thus there are relatively more people competing for the paltry academic jobs. On the other hand, there’s fewer people in general who do physics than say biology, so…. I don’t know. But I do know academic jobs are not a sure bet once you graduate, because I’ve seen totally employable people struggle for positions (and often they leave the field).
I definitely think there needs to be a little more guidance in STEM majors to help students figure out where the gaps are and what they can do to fill them. I know too many people who were told (by their professors) that you can just major in any science and you’re set, and if you don’t find a job get a PhD and you’ll be really set and that was sooo not the case at all.
So, this is a Sing It Sister comment.
tl:dr; I have about three art-and-lit degrees, and I program computers for a living at a non-profit art gallery, and you’re entirely correct and the President is wrong in the easy way.
I went into art because my school was very behind in computers and new media, because computers are about learning more than knowing. Art history – decoding how people thought to produce the images of how they think – has been much more useful to me than any sort of computer class, because I’ve pretty well had to teach myself how to do Computer Things. Basically, Art History teaches even the most twitchy among us to read people, which is incredibly important.
Like anything else, it needs to be taught by someone who’s interested in it, though, to a willing audience.
Your comment reminds me of Eddie Izzard in “Dressed to Kill”: “it’s 70% how you look, 20% how you sound, and 10% what you say.” Perhaps it’s as true in teaching as in politics 🙂
The French approach to higher education is interesting, considering their stereotypical renown for the humanities. The high-achieving path seems to be to study STEM subjects in high school, then attend an elite university focusing on either engineering or public administration, or (increasingly) a private business school. Or I guess Paris 1 which is mostly law, social sciences, philosophy, and history.
But appreciating the humanities is much more built into the day-to-day culture: my wife’s mom (a middle class Parisian, scientist, born in the Caribbean) would probably consider her a huge failure if she’d decided to study art history or literature. But their main leisure activities are going to museums, classical concerts, and the ballet. And my wife knows *way* more about this stuff than I do, with my “classical liberal arts” undergraduate education, even though all of her higher education has been narrowly-focused European degrees in political science, economics, and international relations.
I guess I would also add that I didn’t feel any more “cultured” than any of my coursemates at the British university where I did my Master’s — aside from one guy who did English at Oxford and didn’t seem to know about anything other than Shakespeare =)
Excellent article. As an art educator, I have spent 18 years and thousands of dollars toward understanding the value of art education. The President’s comment poignantly pinpoints how we must constantly reassess our approach to art education. I am writing an ongoing blog series on narrative place-based curriculum. Timely issue for my latest installment: https://saic.digication.com/Summer_of_Discontent/…
Beautifully put!
Thanks Robyne!
I took AP Art History in high school, and it was one of my favorite classes. Since I took AP Euro instead of world history, it was perhaps the only class in my exceptionally white upper middle class suburban high school where I was exposed daily to a diversity of world views, cultures, and histories. Being captivated by ancient Islamic art and the care that society took in their treatment of written texts was how I ended up going to college for Global Studies and Arabic, It absolutely changed my life for the better.
How strange of you to defend Art History and go after philosophy in one breath.
Thanks for your reply! But I think you misread me, or I didn’t explain myself clearly; I was merely reporting that that kind of defense is what others have been offering, and I don’t think it’s compelling (and on top of that, I don’t think it’s very wise or noble to try to undermine your allies to justify yourself).
I enjoyed this piece and thank you for writing it, but I would just like to point out that what President Obama is suggesting is not a guarantee either. I am an art history grad and my brother is a contractor. I have worked consistently since I graduated in 2000 but after the financial crash my brother did not work for an entire year and a half. That’s right he did not earn any income at all, and as a self employed person he just had to eat that. Vocational training is fine and all but vocational jobs are just as responsive to the whims and crushing blows of capitalism as “silly” jobs based in the humanities. Sorry Obama but the real solution is to dismantle global capitalism, that’s my hot take, based on my time in the humanities. (Also being raised by a crusty socialist dad lol.)
As someone who is going back to school to study something supposedly insulated from the brutal vicissitudes of global capitalism, I think about this all the time. Even practical, bankable degrees can lose their value, no one is safe, etc.
Great point! Not only are vocational jobs often victims of the vagaries of the market–they’re also vulnerable to changes in technologies, which can make their highly-specific training obsolete :/
Thanks for a great piece, Tina. Maybe Obama’s 30 years aren’t up yet? I keep thinking, though, that there is a gender component to his criticism of art history and have been surprised that there’s been so little mention of the fact that Art history is one of the fields in American universities most populated by women students. I heard “‘folks’ [as in guys] don’t do a girly field like art history. learn to be a plumber or get your autoworkers’ hat on…” If he’d said “you young men and women should seriously consider learning to repair sinks…” I might be less anguished. It’s the either-or logic, the fact that someone must have chosen a field that they thought it would go over well to criticise, and the overall gender politics implicit in the remarks that gets to me.
Such a good point, J! Reminds me to be thankful “Gallery Girls” was not renewed.
Tina – love your piece and agree about the value of an arts education but want to point out that many (most?) of us (I’m also an Art History grad) don’t go into the arts, and the benefit of our liberal arts education still translates extremely well in the business world. I went into web design and then into marketing.
I tell my business colleagues that Art History is largely Marketing History – think of all those patrons over the centuries – whether the church, guilds, aristocracy, or royalty – expressing their message and public persona through the buildings and works of art they commissioned. Just like today’s corporations do in the modern arena with modern media and technology.
The skills I’ve learned about how to interpret visual images is translated into understanding how a public will respond to marketing messages. Taking that skill and applying it to improve how visual images are understood, page layouts are navigated, and messages engage the public, helps me improve usability, engagement – and yes sales … which enriches shareholders, creates jobs, and boosts the economy.
Thanks, Rupert, for reinforcing a point I was trying to make: if you’re looking for an economic justification for art history, you have to consider that knowing how to understand and work with images has value beyond the arts.
An art history class, taken many decades ago, is the most memorable of my college courses. But it was all of the other classes in engineering that later enabled me to travel to Italy and other places to see the great works in person.
Everyone should take one art history class (and one music history class) as part of their education; and many, many more classes in mathematics and science.
Forget the visual literacy angle. Unnecessary. Art History will enrich your life. That’s all you need to know.
Absolutely, art history will enrich your life, as will all the humanities! But despite how much we lovers of the arts keep repeating that, President Obama can still use art history as a punching bag, so I think that other angles are, in fact, necessary–unless we’re content letting the federal government slash funding for the arts and universities slash their art history programs.
I believe that Obama truly was making an effort to explain gently
and in such a way as to preserve the dignity of the trades that not everyone
is cut out for nor will be happy pursuing higher ed. I don’t believe he meant to diss the humanities,
he was just acknowledging the reality that our society is relentlessly, deeply, hopelessly, pathetically
materialistic– overwhelmingly concerned with money. We’re in the state we’re in because of the media and capitalism, obviously, but it’s important to see that somewhere along the line there took hold the belief that
“a college education guarantees you a good job.” Now we know that is backasswards, but most people don’t.
In fact, the humanities are not “enrichment,” really, though I won’t deny they are that too. IN ESSENCE,
immersion in learning through study of the traditional humanities develops higher order thinking abilities
(analysis, critical thinking, analogical thinking) that can LEAD to executive level professional work. Still,
we know that about 50% of the population IS NOT CAPABLE of higher order abstract thinking. It is cruel and deceptive to lead such as these on to struggle for a degree that they will not be able to act upon at the appropriate level to fulfill this false dream they have been sold. We need shoemakers, carpenters, farmers, cooks, and so on.
They are valuable contributions to our world, and they are paid well. I think that is the crux of the president’s
words, even though he didn’t state them effectively.
I would like to clarify my previous post. When I say trades,” I mean any occupation that is deemed a “practical”
one, and the various techs are included in that catch all. The humanities, that is, studies that instruct and encourage us to develop and value our humanity and that of others, tend to be seen as rarefied, rather than practical, though as we know, in the appropriate context and studied by those who can make something of those studies, they can be extremely “practical,” which I take to mean in America “lucrative.”
Go get ’em Tina Rivers! You are the bomb and I enjoy following your posts!
Ironic, given one of the First Lady’s causes is… arts education.
Studying the arts (of any discipline, not just visual art) will help students gain skills in other disciplines, including STEM subjects. And anyone who sees a bright line between the humanities and vocational/STEM-oriented disciplines has never seen a skyscraper.