Lifting the Lid On Art Education

Payne, Antonia (2004) Lifting the Lid On Art Education. In: A Curriculum for Artists. Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, UK, pp. 52-57. ISBN 0953852539

Abstract / Summary

‘A Curriculum for Artists’ concluded the first, survey phase of research into UK HE Fine Art curricula, conducted by Susan Brind and led by The Laboratory, Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford and the New York Academy of Art. Payne and others were invited to respond to findings.

Drawing also on her own preparatory research, Payne suggests that meaningful consideration of a Fine Art curriculum requires renewed attention to the purposes and aspirations of a Fine Art education. She proposes that what practising artists ‘do’ is no longer necessarily reflected by institutional and governmental expectations of mainstream Fine Art courses, and highlights the radical implications of this situation. She argues an urgent need for creating conditions that encourage artists to re-populate the academy, questioning whether the national, curricular homogeneity identified by Brind is an appropriate response to increasingly diverse expectations. She concludes by proposing the need for “a persuasive case, at the level of the State, for an enquiry into the role of higher education within contemporary visual arts culture, and for the absolute necessity of those who are leading the enquiry to be first and foremost artists whose practices lie as much outside the Academy as within it.”

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