Art & Education presents a new School Watch report on the Academy of Fine Art at Oslo National Academy of the Arts and New Artists gallery featuring work from The University of Texas at Austin.
Beyond the Individual: “Expanded Sculpture” and the Social at the Academy of Fine Art, Oslo
By Sara R. Yazdani
“In October 1972, Joseph Beuys was dismissed from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf for making his course in monumental sculpture open to all who wished to attend. The class attracted dozens more students than could be accommodated, and Beuys drew the ire of the Kunstakademie for enacting a philosophy of education that ran counter to the school’s strict admissions policy. Student protests ensued. The following year, Beuys distilled the conflict between the openness art professes and the structure education requires in his work Demokratie ist lustig (Democracy Is Merry), a silkscreened postcard depicting his forced removal by police from the Kunstakademie. The work and event raise the question: can an art program in a formalized educational institution be truly democratic? The mandates of the Academy of Fine Art at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the artists that comprise its community share, to an extent, Beuys’s concerns for art, life, and education and the external actuation of pedagogical discourses and practices. Art as a social act, it seems, is vital to the academy’s faculty and students. The dynamics of assembling—being and thinking together—and belief in community are materialized and conceptualized not only in the production of artworks at the Academy of Fine Art but in the projects, workshops, and kinships that develop among students and between students and faculty.” [read more]
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, curatorial, cultural and film studies, and other related areas of specialty.
Hero Ready: The University of Texas at Austin 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition
Through a broad range of disciplinary practices, the artists in Hero Ready introduce questions of analysis, subjectivity, agency, and power. What constitutes an art object, and how do we make this distinction? How does art impact our thinking and why? How is our attention held when we look—by whom, and toward what?
Hero Ready presents the culminating work of students receiving Master of Fine Arts degrees in Studio Art.
Over their course of study, MFA students in Studio Art work closely with department faculty to fine-tune existing skill sets and develop new approaches, both conceptual and technical, to their studio practices. In a challenging interdisciplinary environment, students often work across media and in close collaboration with one another, exploring the potential overlaps and depths of established disciplines. The department’s visiting artist and critic program brings acclaimed professionals from outside the university into graduate studios. As part of the diverse intellectual community that makes up The University of Texas at Austin, students have access to resources across campus allowing for a richly informed approach to art making.
The Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest and most diverse in the country. It includes the divisions of Art Education, Art History, and Studio Art and reflects the rigorous standards of a flagship institution, while offering an intimate environment for students to train as scholars, practitioners, and educators in the arts. The department’s twenty-two full-time Studio Art faculty work closely with the program’s graduate art students. The faculty proudly celebrates these eleven artists whose culminating exhibition, Hero Ready, completes their graduate education.
Participating artists: Nima Bahrehmand, Stephen-Bernard Derek Callender, Matthew Cronin, Sarah Fagan, Brooke Frank, Ariel René Jackson, Mark Kovitya, Ling-lin Ku, Renee Lai, Wyatt Ramsey, Shanie Tomassini
All photos by Matthew Cronin, 2019. [view the exhibition]
New Artists offers schools a platform to present student work from degree shows, open-studio presentations, and other annual student exhibitions.