Retrospection before creation

Josef Albers, a founder of the Bauhaus school, said upon arriving in America to teach art that he intended "to open eyes." It was his first sentence in English and the beginning of contemporary art education in America. As the University prepares to usher in a new era of arts education with the dedication of the renovated Addams Fine Arts Center in the heart of campus, perhaps we should follow Albers' advice and open our eyes. Let's not just stick a Penn shield on yet another building. Late in his career, Albers was asked to give a lecture when Trinity College opened its own arts center more than 30 years ago. He called the center an opportunity "for a new era in teaching in which, after a too-enduring emphasis on auditory methods, visual perception -- seeing and vision -- will achieve proper recognition." Addams Hall could indeed provide the opportunity to experience visual perception first hand and, in doing so, erase the artificial gap the University has created between the the so-called liberal arts and the fine arts. Albers wrote in the '60s that "the cultural explosion today makes it obvious that a separation of these two educational disciplines is not only antiquated but anticultural." Penn's current curriculum places theory before practice, retrospection before creation and thus Albers' famed "re-search before the search." Fortunately, the renovated building comes at a time when the College is re-evaluating its General Requirement. Currently, the General Requirement does not include studio art courses like painting, drawing and photography in its seven distributional sectors -- an omission that plainly contradicts its mandate to "expose students to the variety of disciplines and approaches to knowledge pursued in the modern university." The exclusion of studio courses makes one question the College's emphasis on a "variety of approaches" in attaining a liberal arts education. It is important to keep this in mind this week as an external review committee is due to present to President Rodin the results of an investigation on the progress of the undergraduate fine arts program. With its report, the committee will likely address the issue of including studio art courses within the General Requirement, an idea whose time has come. This fall, the College began a five-year experiment with a Pilot Curriculum that may replace the current General Requirement. The pilot program's goal is "to introduce you to broad interdisciplinary areas of human knowledge" through four large, interdisciplinary subject areas. This semester, the Image, Representation and Reality section offers a course on the self-portrait. Although the course promises creative assignments -- a natural opportunity to include the fine arts program -- a studio component to the course was overlooked. A true interdisciplinary education goes beyond pure text-based courses and allows the student to create and not just recite, stimulating both the memory and the imagination. There are many reasons why Fine Arts courses continue to be excluded from programs like the Pilot Curriculum. In the past, Fine Arts was most often ignored because of a lack of studio space for undergraduates in the Blauhaus. The completion of Addams Hall will triple the amount of studio space for undergraduates, allowing for additional sections of popular courses like painting, drawing and photography. Having bridged the physical constraints, the issue then lies within the complex politics that govern the University. Many argue that studio courses should not be allowed in the requirement because they are not part of the College. But as Penn promotes the value of interdisciplinary studies, it should take advantage of all the resources of the University, especially in Fine Arts, whose undergraduate program was ranked in the top 10 by the Princeton Review. After all, is this not the primary advantage of attending a major research university over a liberal arts school? Sadly, this conundrum may be a question of money. Since the College must pay the Graduate School of Fine Arts for each course an undergraduate takes, additional courses are a financial liability for the College and are therefore unlikely to be included. Albers faced the same arguments at Yale in 1950, when he arrived and fought to revolutionize how the university valued visual education. In his 10 years at Yale, he created a vibrant community of artists that developed "eyes and taught students -- including doctors, bankers and lawyers -- to see." In Addams Hall, Penn has the opportunity to create an environment where all students can be taught to learn visually. To truly improve undergraduate education, it is vital that visual learning be included in the Pilot Curriculum. As Albers said, hundreds of people can talk for one who can think. But thousands of people can think for one who can see.

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