Friday, July 31, 2015

Commentary on the San Diego Art Institute: When media distort events and history, just re-write the essay

Ben Sutton of Hyperallergic recently penned an essay, Rebirth of Stagnant San Diego Art Institute Riles Some of Its Members.  (I confess to being one of the riled.)

Much of what Sutton says has been distilled from a distance; despite that distance, he shows flashes of accuracy. 

However, his essay might have been more appropriately titled, Rebirth of San Diego Art Institute: It could have been achieved through collaboration instead of slash-and-burn and violating its City lease.

Let's take a closer look at some of the things Sutton said. This revisionist perspective is not intended to be complete, but rather to illuminate the challenges of writing about institutional change.

Revising the Sutton essay

By Sutton
These accusations, irrespective of their validity (or lack thereof), speak volumes about an institution that was long run like a members-only club in a city badly in need of a more inclusive and forward-thinking municipal art gallery.

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:

The institution was intended by the City Council to be run as a place for San Diego artists to develop, hone their skills and exhibit their work – this is far from a club; instead it is an incubator model that has its place in the City arts scene. Other institutions, like those run for the 1% elites, promote the clubbiness of the insular avant-garde.  .  .  . 


By Sutton:
“I’ve been in town for over 30 years, and during that period the Art Institute was a space with a terrific location in the heart of Balboa Park and a nice facility in terms of the height of the ceilings and quality of light and that sort of thing,” Hugh Davies, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) told Hyperallergic over the phone. 

(Delete the sentence in Sutton's essay alleging a lack of quality in SDAI shows as opined by Davies and replace with a more informed observation)

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
If Davies ever really took in the new shows at SDAI, he would have seen a new type of shoddiness with poor wall tags, poor use of lighting, and a taste for the bizarre.

Here are two exhibited images from the new Porcella regime. If you consider misogyny, religious intolerance and anti-Americanism the highpoints of artistic endeavor, well, there is much to applaud. However, if one is willing to tamp down the thrills of shock-art for actual professional competence, one comes away a bit disappointed at what the elites consider to be ‘good’ art.

    


By Sutton:
The organization of solo exhibitions was not up to a curator, but rather determined by a point system: members who received enough prizes in the juried shows were eventually rewarded with solo shows. “It’s almost like you get miles for flying on American and then you get a first-class seat,” said Davies. [Delete the following sentence] “It’s the most bizarre and primitive way to run an arts organization.” The point system, like much of the SDAI operations pre-2008, seems to have been a vestige of the institute’s early years — it was founded in 1941 as the San Diego Business Men’s Art Club to showcase members’ landscape paintings.


Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
Davies, whose salary is about $440,000, looks down upon an organization that continued its development after 1996 in the style of a grass roots organization – unlike its beginnings as a place for San Diego businessmen in the 1940s and 50s.


Sutton's summary of views he heard:
Most people Hyperallergic spoke to about the institute and its place in the San Diego art scene agree that the shift away from a “members first” approach is very welcome.

Sutton's sentence should be revised as follows:
Most people that Hyperallergic spoke to about the Institute were not lawyers (Nalven was a former litigator) and most failed to understand lease requirements. Apparently, if the City cannot enforce this lease with its clear requirements, how can the City be expected to enforce any of its leases whether in the Park or throughout the City?

Sutton's embracing of Porcella's opinion is one of those say-anythings:
“We’re not in violation of our bylaws or charter; we’ve even met with the city of San Diego, their lawyers, our lawyers, we’ve looked into it, we’re not doing anything untoward,” Porcella said.


A more informed perspective would have stated:
Porcella, who is not an attorney, apparently has failed to understand the provisions of the City’s lease. A close reading of the lease suggests that she, and SDAI, can do what they want, but just not in Balboa Park.

Perhaps, MCASD and Hugh Davies can offer SDAI a space in its downtown location. That would resolve the issue for the City as a win-win result.


Here is the BIG picture
Sutton fails to capture the sense that this crisis could easily have been avoided had the director, Ginger Shulick Porcella, and the Board of Directors invited collaboration with its artist members. Instead, many of the artist members were shunned and a top down management change was put in place.

As a former Chair of the Institute's Board of Directors, and as a former litigator, I realized that such a path could be followed, regardless of its organizational merits -- except for one sticking point. In order to follow that path, Porcella and the Board would have to leave its premises in Balboa Park as a result of violating its lease with the City of San Diego.  (See key lease provision below - 1.2 a)

Rebranding SDAI as running up to Los Angeles, as Porcella and the Board intend, was not part of the City's deal with this artist organization. It was intended for San Diego artists. 

This is where Sutton ought to have started his essay and, after many words, ended it on this point as well.


Comments (either from email or submitted to blog)

Jane FletcherGreat job, Joe! Unfortunately, the lack of opportunity at the San Diego Art Institute has left the art of many San Diego artists homeless. Sadly, the admired goal of many of today's "sophisticated" art elite is shock and baseness instead of beauty and upliftment, almost as if they are encouraging and applauding social decay. One wonders if they are just competing to see who can reach the lowest.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Approaching the new semester: Teaching style, the cost of books and online resources


The semester begins in several weeks.
 
Several questions top instructors concerns:  the cost of textbooks; engaging students; being fair to different viewpoints.

Here is my approach in a highly diverse student population at a community college. 

The cost of textbooks
The new edition costs about $240. It is a paperback, 384 pages. The pictures are good ones, but there are 50 pages less than before. Missing are interesting maps and gone are the test questions at the end of each chapter for students to test themselves.


Buy it in digital format for $192. Rent it for the semester, $80. Used? It is fairly recent and used copies are available. If I allowed the students to use the previous edition, a used copy would cost about $25 and renting it, $16.
I could change textbooks or perhaps make my own compilation. I could also email students copies of articles (without infringing copyright) and use YouTube videos.

The real question is whether this textbook will be a good foundation for information and knowledge.  Whatever quibbles I have with the textbook, the students come to an exotic course about cultures in different places in the world and over millennia.

The book demands strong analytic skills. That is important, but can my students succeed?  

This is a community college with a diverse student profile. My students are from 17 to 65, more women than men, Latinos, Blacks, Whites and immigrants from across the world, vets, ex-cons, the variety of genders, some homeless, and all with varying degrees of English literacy. And generally less affluent than students at nearby four year colleges.

So, $240 for a 355 page paperback and an instructor with too many degrees? 

The question about learning certainly is about the textbook and its accessibility, but it also is about the instructors and the personal adventure they set for the student.

Engaging students
So, how do we get the curriculum to speak to the students? What are the recipes for inviting students to immerse themselves in the course’s subject matter?

       Start the class before the class actually begins with some unusual music. We don’t only learn through reading. For anthropologists, we participate and observe the life of others ─ doing their rituals, eating their foods, dancing their dances. 
Suggestion:  Visit Caridad de la Luz on YouTube and watch For Witch It Stands.


       No political correctness. Respecting each other is sufficient. 

       Shocking students. That’s easy enough for anthropologists: Different cultures and different lifestyles are shocking. So, let’s deal with them. Avoid self-censorship based on a fear of committing a micro-aggression. Example: Divide the class into men and women (and for those with other gender identifications, they can choose whichever group they prefer) and have them read a Blackfoot legend about Old Man Coyote and Coyote Woman. Whoa! That has them laughing and blushing. This story contrasts with Genesis’s Adam and Eve creation story and invites discussion of power relationships, gender concepts and cultural notions of sexuality.

       Balance the author’s liberal or conservative values and perspectives with opposite ones. Why not? Isn’t the university a broad marketplace of ideas? What is important is not to grade students on one’s own point of view, but to draw out competing perspectives. For example, faculty may be accused of bias, such as Islamophobia, racism, being a climate change denier and the like because they present competing perspectives instead of a truncated ideology. 

The textbook I use (Appreciating Cultural Diversity) fails to present competing perspectives on several important topics, particularly on Islamic terrorism and what draws individuals to this ideology as well as a one-sided view of climate change science. 

A dedicated talk-show host, whose interest is in clarity rather than seeking conformity, has taken on the task of creating an online (and free) “university.” Five minute talks by informed discussants challenge the viewer about how one might understand a topic. Rather than shrinking from such an approach, instructors should be able to challenge themselves in front of their students. We might call this the new pedagogy.  I imagine many instructors would dismiss this challenge based on the presumption of ‘I have my degree’; but the world is changing, and a Socratic mindset would challenge every instructor to start from the beginning with the famous dictum: The only thing I know is that I do not know anything. 

Here are several 5 minute courses to wake the students (and the instructor) to a brass tacks discussion:




       Have students do original research, formulating hypotheses and testing them. This requires considerable support, but it shows students that classroom studies can be practical and can help them get a job.  

Avoiding bias in grading
An instructor must take affirmative steps to prevent his or her bias from influencing the grading process. Here is what I do; other instructors should state their approach.

In the textbook I use, the author presents one view of global warming/ climate change. The question at the end of the chapter speaks to his perspective. In preparation for the final exam, I present his view in class and ask the students how they would answer the question from the author’s perspective. That is one point for knowing the author’s bias. Then I reframe the question from my perspective (the skeptical scientist rather than the true believer in computer modeling). I ask the students to answer the multiple choice question from my perspective. Score one point for knowing my bias.

The teachable moment is that students get two points – one for the author’s perspective, one for my perspective; AND they get to witness that instructors and book authors can disagree without the student having to adopt one or the other and being penalized for believing in the ‘preferred’ answer. The students should then realize that they have to think for themselves in the continuing pursuit of how to understand the world.

That is a pedagogy that allows for competing biases without penalizing the students. This approach is more difficult to achieve in an essay exam – not impossible, but more difficult. 

Making a pedagogical choice
Some students might prefer a less active teacher. So, this approach doesn’t work for all.  

But, for me, I enjoy teaching in this way and hope that my love for the subject carries over to those students who not only enroll, but come to class to engage with the subject.  

The classroom is a two-way street and involves more than buying a $240 textbook.
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Joe Nalven teaches cultural anthropology at San Diego City College.