“What are the ideal conditions needed for each student to flourish?” asks writer Kirsty Bell in her profile on Frankfurt’s prestigious Städelschulethis month. Evaluating the school’s introverted nature and tracking the shifting impact of local and international influences on its evolution, Bell describes an environment rife with contradictions that might be, she observes, “just the right balance of critique and opportunity, support and neglect.” While the institution seems to defy any specific formula for pedagogical success, Bell manages to draw out the various and often competing factors in its idiosyncratic operation.
Currently on School Watch:
Corrine Fitzpatrickrevisits the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts summer intensive at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, providing an in-depth look at the community ethos that has developed over thirty-three years since its inception.
Andrew Berardini reports from the MFA studios and time-honored “crit” at the California Institute of Arts, surveying the institution’s singular history and student work from the 2014 MFA class.
Andrew Cappetta considers the institutional and pedagogical direction of Hunter College‘s MFA program after the appointment of their chair Howard Singerman and a major relocation to 205 Hudson Street in Tribeca. Tyler Coburn investigates, visiting Hunter’s classrooms and speaking with current MFAs and recent graduates to offer a view of the institution from their perspective.
School Watch presents distilled perspectives on degree programs in the arts, with interviews, critical texts and editorial exposés on MFAs, Masters, Doctorates and certificate programs in fine arts, art history, critical, curatorial, cultural and film studies, and other related areas of specialty.
This month on Video School:
Sohrab Mohebbi contributes a series of lectures on what makes contemporary art contemporary by Peter Osbourne and Suhail Malik.
Nathan Lee‘s contribution examines form and rhetoric in the discourse of the Anthropocene featuring videos by Bruno Latour, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Elizabeth Kolbert.
Marina Vishmidt‘s selection concerns the relationship between affirmation and negation in the political imagination with lectures by Fred Moten, Karan Barad, and Lisa Robertson in conversation with Aisha Sasha John.
Video School features lectures and conversations chosen by artists and thinkers on issues relevant to their practice and/or contemporary artistic discourse. Organized thematically and highlighting current topics, Video School responds to the proliferation of educational videos circulating online by handpicking content pertinent to viewers.
