The Decline of Art History Programs

The NY Times has an interesting article about art history programs and how curation and technology are impacting the study of fine art.

Not to over simplify, but the market is changing, and how people learn is also changing. Changing demographics and delivery platforms developed through digital technologies is having a far reaching impact of the art market, including appraisers. We as appraisers, as well as the major organizations, such as ISA, AAA, ASA and the Appraisal Foundation need to be aware of the changes and start to embrace new dynamics and demographics. How we deliver education, what we deliver and how it is implemented is currently very important, and new methodologies should be embraced. If now, be prepared to fall behind.

My daughter is a Senior Manager of Strategic Messaging at an association and recently wrote a short article about young professionals and social media strategies. One of the strategies she mentioned is reverse mentoring, meaning younger professionals teaching more seasoned professionals about social media strategies. Makes sense when you think about it, as the young professionals are digital natives and have grown up with social media. They accept it more and understand it better. In short, technology is changing much of what we do, including how we learn.

The NY Times reports

“Rembrandt weeps.”

“The humanities are under assault.”

“An educational disaster.”

“Heinous.”

These were just a few of the howls of online dismay that followed the announcement this month that AQA, the last examining board offering History of Art as an A-level test to 16- to 18-year-olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, would be dropping the subject.

“Our decision wasn’t about money or whether history of art deserves a place in the curriculum,” said a statement issued by the AQA press office. The small number of students taking the subject and its wide range of topics had made it difficult to compare exam performance, the board explained.

Just 839 students took AQA’s History of Art A-level last summer (as opposed to 15,789 taking Physics), with the vast majority of those candidates attending private schools. Many of these students have gone on to study the subject at university and will then take unpaid or modestly paid positions in galleries and auction houses that sell artworks for multi-digit prices.

Art history, deservedly or not, has acquired a reputation for elitism and dilettantism. In 2014 President Obama said in a speech that people with skills in a trade or manufacturing can make a lot more money “than they might with an art history degree.” The president later apologized for the remark. Pushing for a similar reversal, hundreds of academics have urged British lawmakers to reinstate the History of Art A-level. The Pearson group is currently “exploring with the government” whether it is able to re-offer the subject, according to a press officer.

Nevertheless, the perception remains that studying Rembrandt or Rothko is not a “serious” academic discipline. Yet this idea is strangely at odds with the prestige that art and artists can confer on individuals and institutions, at least in certain circles.

That disconnect was plain to see on Oct. 20 when ArtReview published its 15th annual Power 100 listing. While Twitter was still reverberating with what the Columbia University professor Simon Schama called the “outrage” of that axed A-level, Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, was declared the most powerful individual in the art world.

Chosen by 20 anonymous international experts appointed by the weighty London-based magazine, the ArtReview Power 100 gives the outside world an inside track on the latest trends of the contemporary art world. The ranking is dominated by curators (14), artists (25), collectors (16) and gallerists (30). Auction house specialists, art advisers and critics rarely feature on the list, and this year none make it.

“Power” for ArtReview is held by those who decide what kind of art is “made visible,” according to the list’s introduction.

In that regard, the Swiss-born Mr. Obrist, 48 — who never formally studied art history — is hard to beat. Legendary for the insomniac relentlessness of his globe-trotting schedule, he travels to visit artists and museums 52 weekends of the year and is the co-founder of the Brutally Early Club, a discussion group that periodically convenes in cities such as London, New York and Paris at 6.30 am. Mr. Obrist is a curator of artists’ “thoughts and intentions” more than what they “do and make,” though he is “an enabler” of that as well, the keepers of the list write. The British digital artist Ed Atkins (number 50 in the Power 100) was given a one-man show by him at the Serpentine in 2014.

In July, Mr. Obrist published his “Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects,” echoing Giorgio Vasari’s famous 1550 “Lives,” which the would-be curator read at the age of 17. Those same biographies underpin the threatened A-level History of Art syllabus studied by British 17 year-olds, who many view as choosing a “soft” option.

Mr. Obrist is becoming the Vasari of our digital age. His ongoing “Interview Project” on tumblr.com has over 2,000 hours of interviews with influential individuals across a range of cultural disciplines. He is the co-founder of 89plus.com, a research project that curates and promotes the work of more than 6,000 artists born in or after 1989. He has 147,000 followers on Instagram, where he systematically posts images of handwritten messages artists doodle at the end of interviews with him.

“Social media is an additional layer of research for me and it will never replace studio and exhibition visits,” Mr. Obrist said in an email. “Digital consumption only gives people a bigger desire than ever to engage with art in person.” Visitor numbers at the Serpentine Galleries, where he has been a director since 2006, increased last year to 995,335 from 912,746 in 2014.

Technological savviness and a multifaceted approach distinguish the highest climbers in this year’s Power 100. To be sure, there are the usual suspects of the commercial gallery scene, such as Iwan & Manuela Wirth (at 3), David Zwirner (4) and Larry Gagosian (6). But above them at number 2 is the politicized Polish curator Adam Szymczyk, the director of next year’s 14th quinquennial Documenta art exhibition, which for the first time will be held in Athens as well as its hometown Kassel in Germany.

The most “powerful” artist, at number 7, is the Berlin-based Hito Steyerl, whose immersive video installation, “Factory of the Sun,” was on show from February to September at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, having represented Germany at the previous year’s Venice Biennale.

In interviews, Ms. Steyerl, a professor of New Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts, is a trenchant critic of how income inequality has increased prices at the top end of the art market and reduced wages at the bottom, where art history graduates from well-off homes provide a ready supply of cheap labor. None of her works have appeared on the Artnet database of salesroom prices.

ArtReview conspicuously favors what might be called “curator art” ahead of the more commercial “collector art” that dominates the art fair and auction scene (market favorites Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool are ranked at 30 and 80, respectively).

Does this suggest curators have become the art world’s new power brokers? Mr. Obrist, top of the pile in the 2016 Power 100, modestly begs to differ. “The power will always be in art itself, and with the artists who make it,” he said. “A curator is merely an enabler, although the concept of curation has certainly taken on a wider meaning in the digital age.”

For Mr. Obrist, “objects are still very relevant.” But at the same time, millions of smartphone users — and Mr. Obrist’s own curatorial practice — are challenging the centuries-old cult of the artwork as a precious object to be studied and traded by a privileged few.

Where this will lead the art world, art history, the art market and — most important of all — art itself, is anyone’s guess. The formal study of the history of art, with its generally impecunious career prospects, may well remain a niche subject. But the digitalization of art means a lot more people across the world are looking at the stuff. They might even be inspired to look at some of the older stuff.

Rembrandt could come up smiling in the end.

Source: The NY Times