The academy, the gallery, the art school – significant art historical movements have emerged within, around and against these sites marked either by tradition or transformation. Take the Bauhaus, Nova Scotia School of Art and Design (NSCAD), or the Académie des Beaux-Arts: these institutions demarcate important shifts in pedagogy that spoke to larger socio-political crises. Today, for example, the university system in general and the art school in particular face ever-increasing duress as the cost of tuition soars and faculty positions dwindle. Heeding this crisis and faced with the need to adapt, institutional sites have created new digital platforms including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that take education beyond university walls and impact the 20th-century liberal arts education model. These changes affect contemporary praxis and generate questions that examine how alternative pedagogies challenge institutions and audiences, leading to a reconsideration of the potential for art to contest and/or grapple with hegemonic shifts in educational ideology.
Considering the importance of pedagogy for contemporary and historical art discourse and practice, the 37th University of British Columbia Art History, Visual Art and Theory (AHVA) Graduate Symposium seeks to examine the rapport between art praxis, pedagogy, and the institution.
All welcome. For further details about the Symposium program, please visit the event page.