The undergraduate art major in flux

BY GEORGE WEINBERG

Yale's instruction dates back to 1869, when the School of Fine Arts began to provide courses in drawing, painting, sculpture, and art history just five years after its opening. This transition made it the first school of art connected to an institution of higher learning. Most mark the birth of the school in a modern context with the coming of Josef Albers, a seminal figure of 20th-century art, who chaired Yale's Department of Design from 1951 to 1959. "He made it so it wasn't a gentleman's painting school, wasn't a WPA [Works Progress Administration] program, wasn't anything like that. He brought everyone else up by their boot straps," Stacey Gemmill, director of financial affairs for the School of Art, said.

Albers is also credited as the driving force behind the school's commitment to an undergraduate program. The first artist to teach was Bernard Chaet, now professor emeritus of drawing and painting. Chaet remembers, "The '50s was the rebirth of the undergraduate art major. We believed in it, and by the '70s, we gave more than half of the energy to the undergraduate program." Currently, there are roughly 50 undergraduate art majors at any one time, with nearly 800 undergraduates enrolled in art courses each year.

The program obviously benefits from being a part of the most respected and distinguished professional art school in the country. Richard Benson, BK '57, Dean of the School of Art, comments on the advantages of this relationship, both to graduate and undergraduate students: "One of the great benefits of being at Yale is that we can bring these two populations together, we have our faculty teach both, and we mix them up as much as we can. I consider our role as a professional school to be equally balanced as our role as undergraduates teachers in Yale College, and I think that these are two things that are in a state of parity."

Yet there are criticisms that may call  into question this supposed balance. A number of School of Art faculty, for example, appear not to have a serious commitment to undergraduate teaching. While the possible reasons for this are complex, one major factor may concern the balance of faculty living in New Haven and those who commute from New York. Chaet, who admits that he is biased toward the years he spent teaching before retiring 11 years ago, comments, "It all has to do with how much emphasis there is by the faculty. In order to have an [undergraduate] program like this, you have to have faculty who live in New Haven. I am afraid the tendency in schools like this is to depend on the railroad. If I were paying the tuition you were paying, I would be speaking up a little. How many other departments have a faculty that commutes?"

Yet the situation is not as simple as that. "Art is a complicated thing to teach because it's volatile and it changes, and the full-time faculty who are in residence tend not to change," Benson said. "And we don't want to become a school that is out of step with time—we want to preserve tradition, but we also want to be flexible and interact with changes. Our visiting faculty is how we do that." He continued, "One of the strengths of Yale is that it draws on New York. We have always kept a balance of faculty who live here, who are full-time, and who commute. At any given moment, we work to maintain that balance, and it's always hard to do. There are times—and now is one—when it would be better to have more people in residence than we have actually have." He attributes the lack of resident faculty to the once-prosperous economy, as professional artists are less compelled to teach when they are making money.

Robert Reed, ART '62, currently the Art DUS, has worked closely with both Albers and Chaet. He points to the lack of an undergraduate community, especially in regard to faculty and space as a major problem: "A very obvious change in both the undergraduate and graduate programs has been the shift of the community, as conceived in years past, which relied on people who were in close proximity to the actual instructional charge of this university. Close proximity means residency, means availability, means being around, and we had a wonderful balance in the past." He continued, "That paradigm has changed, and has changed very drastically...I don't feel we have an undergraduate community, I feel we don't have the kind of stuff that causes people to get together and interact."

While whole-heartedly applauding the commitment that administrators like President Richard Levin, GRD '74, have shown, Reed points out that the undergraduate facilities in the new art building, Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Hall, are basically comparable to what undergraduates had in the old Art and Architecture building. "[Undergraduates] here are just some of the most talented people I have ever worked with,"he said. "I feel that they are getting the shaft in many respects, in terms of being able to be part of the community, and it's a physical thing—there's no place to sit down and talk to people."

Attitudes towards the art major from students outside the "theoretical" artistic community tend to involve a preconceived notion of frivolity. The major may be perceived by some as easy, non-practical, or a waste of one's opportunities at Yale. Natalie Frank, JE '02, painting major and recent recipient of the $6,500 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, attributes the program's shortcomings—namely faculty apathy—to the lack of serious art students at Yale. "Because it's Yale, people come here for economics or history. People go to art schools to get a real art education, but I've come here to get a Yale education."

The larger question, then, is what kind of students does Yale's undergraduate program attract, and how does this relate to the lack of seriousness that art majors and faculty alike seem to attribute to the program? And what kind of currency does a B.A. in art from Yale hold? The answers are perhaps incalculable, but certainly relate to the reputation, strength, and relationship of the undergraduate program to Yale's world-renown graduate school.

Out of this year's enrollments to this year's School of Art graduate painting/printmaking program—traditionally the school's most reputed—33 students held B.F.A. degrees, while 11 had B.A.'s. Art schools such as Cooper Union, Maryland Institute (College of Art), and School of the Art Institute of Chicago provided the greatest number of students.

But is Yale preparing its art majors to compete in graduate school in a manner analogous to, for example, the English department, or is that even a consideration of the program because "serious" art students aren't coming to the undergraduate program at all? Both of these compel rather speculative answers, especially considering records of where B.A. recipients go with their degrees, are not available. One place they do not usually go is to the School of Art's M.F.A. program, because, as Dean Benson comments, "They have already had access to the professors at all levels." Most well-known of recent undergraduates include Maya Lin, SY '81, and current art star and teen-hipster referent, Matthew Barney, BR '89, who is deservedly included in the current M.F.A. alumni show, although he is the only alumni of the College to be represented.

The undergraduate art program, though, certainly attracts a large number of students who arrive at college knowing that they want to become art majors, and who choose Yale for its relationship to the School of Art. Art majors are allowed to take two graduate level courses, and graduate students are required to take a course outside the school, usually in Yale College.

The undergraduate program's most central strength has always been in this ability to share two spheres: one within Yale College, which brings along with it the opportunities and time commitments of one of the best undergraduate educations anywhere, and that of the School of Art, which, through faculty and TAs, fosters the study of an equally rigorous visual language. When this relationship is out of balance, as many suggest it is, both spheres can be corrupted, and no art student recieves the full benefits of either.

Could a similar show to that of the current graduate alumni exhibition being displayed in the school be made from past undergraduate majors? Such an exhibit was actually done roughly 20 years ago. With the current Alumni Choice exhibit hanging in the same place that the work in the undergraduate major's show did last year, the contrast between the quality and sophistication is striking.

Whether or not this is to be expected or accepted, something does seem to be a little off within the School of Art. According to Professor Reed, "I really think we are missing something in terms of a community that reinforces, that develops. We have it in the graduate program, and I don't feel we have it in the undergraduate."

Graphic taken from Yale University Bulletin.

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