WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) spent yesterday promoting its new database for its art collection. The results seem spectacular and they are inviting others to leverage the database for their own research and examination. Personally, I don't remember even visiting the collection while I taught at Williams. I visited the Clark a lot (and eventually found it repetitive and boring) but never bothered with the on-campus museum.
Now, however, it looks like they are doing a lot more at WCMA to make the collection significant in the life of the college. According to a press release they even have a program where you can hang a work from the museum in your own dorm room. I would have loved to look through the collection and find a piece to put over my fireplace on Southworth Street. Here's an overview of some of the WCMA's outreach programs:
WCMA uses its collection in amazing ways. It’s an academic museum, and the collection is meant to be a key part of learning across disciplines. In Object Lab, faculty select works of art that become lenses for classes to explore neuroscience, or botany, or religion. Collection objects are loaned to students through WALLS, encouraging long-term personal connections. The Rose Object Classroom allows artworks to be used in a classroom space. WCMA’s Reading Room encourages timely public conversation around individual works of art.My pro-tip for conservative students is to simply ignore abstract art and modernism. It is, in my view, silly and a waste of time. I'm a member of the California Art Club. I like to think of myself as a contemporary plein air, representational artist. I know from personal experience that it is not easy to learn the skill-based visual arts. In the famous atelier system, for example, a student may spend years working up the ladder learning to draw in charcoal, paint in black and white, and eventually use a broader pallet. The more you know about representational art, the more fascinating it becomes.
Representational art is having a comeback today. It was unfairly stigmatized after WWII even thought it was the most popular art in the world for centuries. This is because the Nazi elite was especially aggressive in trying to de-legitimize abstract art, impressionism, and realistic art. Fortunately, representational art is coming back. There are more art schools teaching it. Representational/figurative artists (not exactly the same thing) are doing better in gallery sales and in art auctions.
It is still difficult, however, to find teachers to bring artists up to speed on creating representational art in drawing, painting and sculpture. Nevertheless, more of these schools - based on the traditional atelier system - are starting to appear in the US and also in Europe.
Accordingly, if you look at a piece of art and think it is nonsense, you are 100% right. If you get any bullshit from your leftist teachers or peers, then just let them know that you prefer - for practical purposes - representational art. You like how it requires more skill and less theoretical explanations to make it interesting. After a while, you'll help others see that abstract art is more like leftist decorations than serious, worthwhile art. You will be in good company, representational art is coming back and in a few years we will be laughing at (or feeling sorry for) the folks investing in abstract art and modernism.
John C. Drew, Ph.D., is a former Williams College professor in American politics and political economy. He contributes to American Thinker, Breitbart, Campus Reform, The College Fix, and WorldNetDaily.
No comments:
Post a Comment