This is a condensed version of my full Arts Policy Library write-up on the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). Please check out the latter for a more comprehensive discussion of their report. 

Is an arts degree worth it or worthless? Many an art or art history major has had to defend the value of her studies. Indeed, in a Kiplinger article that used data from payscale.com and Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce to determine the “Worst College Majors for Your Career,” fine arts, studio arts, film/photography, graphic design, drama and theater arts all made the list. The article claims that recent arts graduates have higher unemployment rates and are more likely to wind up working in retail than those who chose other majors. But the recent Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) report, “A Diverse Palette: What Arts Graduates Say About Their Education and Careers” indicates that post-graduation life is not so bad for arts alumni. SNAAP’s report found that:

• The unemployment rate for arts alumni is less than half the unemployment rate for all Americans, and about equivalent to the unemployment rate for college graduates.
• The overwhelming majority (92%) of SNAAP respondents reported either a “good” or “excellent” experience at their alumni institution and most would “do it all over again” if given the chance.
• More than three-quarters of currently employed arts alumni are “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their primary job.
• More than two-thirds of arts alumni remain active in the arts community by creating, exhibiting and performing.
• Arts alumni are significantly more likely than the average American to have volunteered their time or donated money to an arts organization or artist in the past year.

However, when we look further into SNAAP’s research, the following stand out as issues:

• The possibility that SNAAP’s respondents aren’t representative of arts alumni as a whole, for the following reasons:
  • the survey only reaches graduates who have maintained valid contact information with their school or who can be located using a service called Harris Connect
  • the survey is exclusively online and takes 20-30 minutes to complete, possibly rendering it less attractive for alumni who lack consistent internet access in their homes or don’t feel strongly about their relationship with their alma mater
  • institutions pay to participate in SNAAP, which may indicate that participating institutions are already paying above average attention to their students and alumni
  • a disproportionate number of the participating institutions appear to have top-ranked arts programs, based on an analysis of visual arts fields; graduates from these programs may be better-off and happier with their education than the average arts alumni
• The potential conflict inherent in using data from paying institutions to create a field research report
• SNAAP used different measures than the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce study or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to collect employment figures; SNAAP’s method includes intermittent work as employment, making accurate comparisons impossible
• The survey does not ask its respondents to consider their opportunity costs when making subjective judgments about the value of their education

Ultimately, the SNAAP report is largely inconclusive, in large part due to the questions about its representativeness and because one of the few metrics that could potentially serve as a common yardstick with other fields of study is complicated by SNAAP’s alternative approach to measuring employment status. Still, SNAAP is the most comprehensive data resource available for pre-professional arts education, and reminds us that an education should be valued for more than the average earning potential of its graduates.

(For a quick summary of this post, see “Strategic National Arts Almuni Project: The Condensed Version.” SNAAP has responded in the comments.)

Is an arts degree worth it or worthless? Many an art or art history major has had to defend the value of her studies. Indeed, in a Kiplinger article that used data from payscale.com and Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce to determine the “Worst College Majors for Your Career,” fine arts, studio arts, film/photography, graphic design, drama and theater arts all made the list. The article warns college students who are tempted to major in fine arts that the unemployment rate for recent grads is 12.6% (almost twice the national average of 6.8%) and they are 1.8% more likely to work in retail than the average college graduate.

The employment situation for recent art-school grads is anything but aesthetic. Slow job growth and an abundance of fine-arts majors means unemployment is high – the second highest on our list. When fine-arts majors do find jobs, they generally don’t pay well. Even experienced artists can expect to make 20% less than their college classmates. While few people have ever gone into art for the money, the East Village isn’t as cheap as it used to be.

So the recent Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) report that finds that the unemployment rate for arts alumni is less than half the unemployment rate for all Americans is heartening, but surprising. Moreover, the report claims that most arts alumni “are satisfied with the opportunities their ‘primary job’ affords to demonstrate their creativity.” The sunny outlook that SNAAP presents in “A Diverse Palette: What Arts Graduates Say About Their Education and Careers” seems to be in conflict with both the aforementioned Kiplinger article and conventional wisdom. But is it? Let’s analyze what the SNAAP report actually has to say about the prospects for arts alumni.

SUMMARY

SNAAP, based at the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, was founded for the stated purposes of providing a comprehensive look at artist development in the United States, and identifying how best to connect arts education and training to artistic careers. SNAAP defines “the arts” and “art” as inclusive of

 a broad range of creative activity including performance, design, architecture, creative writing, music composition, choreography, film, illustration, and fine art.

Since 2009, SNAAP has distributed a yearly report based on the results of an annual online survey that it gives to alumni of participating institutions. These institutions include arts high schools, comprehensive colleges and universities, liberal arts colleges and special-focus arts institutions. Institutions pay to participate in the project, with fees for post-secondary schools ranging from $3300 to $7800, depending upon the size of the arts alumni population. The survey comprises eighty-three questions and takes 20-30 minutes to complete.

The most recent 2012 report, based upon results from the 2011 SNAAP survey, presented many positive findings, or at least findings that appear to be positive. Most SNAAP respondents are currently employed. In fact, for the past two years, the SNAAP respondent unemployment rate is less than half the national unemployment rate for all Americans. What’s more, 87% of currently employed SNAAP respondents are “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with their primary job. Even most of those who are working in non-arts fields report general work-satisfaction, and most also say that despite working in an area outside of the arts, their arts training is still relevant to their work.

When asked if they would “do it all over again,” 77% of SNAAP respondents said that yes, if given the chance to go back in time, they would make the same choices as they originally had in terms of institution and major. Indeed, 92% reported that their overall experience at their institution was either good or excellent, and 88% would recommend their school to other prospective students.

Furthermore, arts alumni are also likely to participate in the arts outside of work. The report explains why this is meaningful:

One of the arguments for public support for the arts is that the presence and contributions of artists add depth and meaning to the human experience, thereby enhancing the quality of life for all. Thus, it’s important to know how arts graduates contribute to the arts and their communities independent of their income-producing work.

More than a quarter of SNAAP respondents have volunteered for an arts organization in the past year, and 45% have donated money to an arts organization or artist in the past 12 months. These are significantly higher rates than those in the general population, where just 2% of Americans volunteer for arts, cultural or humanities organizations, and only 6% of US households with incomes under $100,000 have given money to the arts. Moreover, in their leisure time, 72% of SNAAP respondents remain active in the arts community by creating, exhibiting and performing.

But it isn’t all coming up roses for arts graduates. Despite the encouraging employment data, 50% of survey respondents were “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied with the career advising they received at their school. Nearly half were unhappy with the opportunities for degree-related internships and other work that their institutions provided, and 41% found occasions to network with alumni lacking.

Additionally, 40% of currently employed respondents have two or more jobs, which may be a sign that  they are unable to find full-time work or that their primary job does not provide enough income to live on. In fact, the majority of respondents from all arts majors except architecture earn less than $50,000 per year in their primary job.

Still, the 2012 SNAAP report concludes:

For many of these graduates, going to an arts training institution was “worth it”; they gained invaluable skills that they continue to draw upon whether or not they work as professional artists—both at work and in their non-work time.

ANALYSIS

Certainly the value of an arts education must be measured as more than the average earning potential of its graduates. Even so, the SNAAP report findings are inconsistent with data reported in the Kiplinger article, which states that there are higher unemployment rates for arts graduates. Why might this be? Let’s analyze the methodology of SNAAP’s research.

Respondent Representativeness

The 2011 SNAAP Questionnaire is only available online, and SNAAP relies on the individual institutions to disseminate information about the survey. This means that SNAAP survey respondents maintained valid email and/or mailing addresses on file with their alumni institutions, or had been active enough on social media to be located either directly by their schools or by Harris Connect, the “people finder” service contracted by SNAAP. Respondents who take the time to remain in email contact with their alumni institutions may be more likely to think favorably about those institutions than those who haven’t. And of the alumni contacted, those motivated to respond to the 20-30 minute survey may have been more likely to hold positive viewpoints about their institutions and present career situations.

The exclusive online availability of the survey, as well as the fact that information about the survey is primarily disseminated online, means that respondents most likely have regular internet access, and that they’re comfortable navigating the web. The survey delivery method may skew toward a more well-off demographic who are able to pay for internet in their homes. The questionnaire takes 20-30 minutes to complete. If you’re using your local coffee shop’s internet to look for work and e-mail resumes, you may not be as inclined to use a half hour of that time to complete an alumni survey as someone who is sitting at home after work watching hulu and cruising Facebook.

Anecdotally, I often hear of individuals from well-off backgrounds enjoying success in the arts, in part because they are able to afford to take unpaid internships, or participate in residencies where they generate no income for months at a time. These opportunities may lead to greater things. Additionally, these are pleasurable experiences, and although one may not be earning a large income, a SNAAP respondent may still reflect on them positively, especially if paying rent and buying food isn’t a concern. Thus, it’s possible that the SNAAP respondents are more financially comfortable in the aggregate than arts alumni as a whole, and if so we might expect to see this bias reflected in the responses. (Unfortunately, while the SNAAP survey asks the age, gender and ethnicity of each respondent, it does not ask any questions about the socio-economic background of the respondent, or whether he or she has additional financial support or means beyond his or her income.)

Danielle J. Lindemann and Steven J. Tepper’s recently published follow-up report on SNAAP’s 2010 survey, which was structured and delivered in the same way as the 2011 survey, acknowledges the survey’s potential response bias: “It is plausible that more financially successful arts graduates are more likely to fill out a survey about their experiences.” However, they counter that results from an earlier study indicate that the SNAAP results are not skewed in this respect. In 2009, SNAAP conducted a shadow study using a variety of incentives, such as a $15 gift card and inclusion into a lottery for a $100 award, as well as different modes of delivery, including paper, web and phone. Their report explains:

We found that there were no meaningful differences in the characteristics of the graduates in the high response rate group compared to the low response rate group. Related to the question of employment, for example, respondents from the higher-response rate sample indicated that they were currently doing paid work an average of 31 hours per week. Comparable individuals from the full SNAAP sample in 2009 indicated that they were doing paid work an average of 34 hours per week.

Still, even if alumni who are financially better off weren’t more likely to respond to the SNAAP survey, the issue of what alumni the SNAAP survey reached remains. More than 36,000 alumni responded to the survey, for an average institutional response rate of just over 20%. But, alumni who have updated their institution with current contact information may already be more inclined to respond positively about that institution than those who haven’t.

Even if there is no bias among respondents to the survey, however, the selection of institutions participating in SNAAP is not random. The 2011 SNAAP survey was sent to alumni from 183 programs in 66 institutions, including 8 arts high schools, 20 private nonprofit postsecondary schools, and 38 public postsecondary schools. These postsecondary institutions include colleges and universities with top-ranked arts programs, such as Maryland Institute College of Art, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, University of California – Los Angeles and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as a number that are less known for their arts programs. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable cross-section of higher arts education across the nation. Still, these institutions have all chosen to participate in SNAAP, and paid a fee for the privilege of doing so. This suggests that they are already paying above average attention to students and alumni of their arts programs. What’s more, of the 58 postsecondary institutions, more than 30% have art programs in disciplines that include fine arts, ceramics, graphic design, multimedia/visual communications, painting/drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture, ranked in the top 20 by US News. To put this in perspective, the College Arts Association’s directory of Graduate programs in Studio Art and Design includes almost 250 individual institutions. These arts graduates, with degrees from esteemed institutions, may be more financially successful and happier with their arts training than arts alumni from second- and third-tier schools.

SNAAP’s efforts to increase and test response rates, through its use of Harris Connect and the shadow survey, are commendable. Still, the report repeatedly uses “arts alumni,” “arts graduates” and “SNAAP respondents” interchangeably. Are respondents to the survey representative of arts alumni as a whole? Unfortunately, there is no way for us to know.

Conflicting Interests

As mentioned earlier, participating institutions pay to have the survey sent to their alumni. This potentially creates a bias, if not in the survey’s responses, then in how this data is ultimately interpreted in the final SNAAP report and “packaged” to a broader audience. SNAAP explains why it requires fees from participating institutions:

…as a self-sustaining research project, institutional participation fees underwrite the cost of survey administration, data analysis, and school reports.

In other words, SNAAP needs these fees in order to remain viable. Although the individual institutions’ reports aren’t made public, schools might understandably be hesitant to participate in a study that openly casts doubt on the value of an arts education. In turn, that lack of participation could mean the end of SNAAP. Indeed, the SNAAP report does include negative statistics, but they are always countered with a positive statement, so that the overall tone and takeaway is optimistic. For example, the following passage from the SNAAP report came after a list of mixed results about alumni satisfaction with various aspects of their education:

While the results suggest a variety of strengths and weaknesses for institutions to consider, they also indicate that despite any less than stellar experiences alumni may have had, most who obtained an arts degree have few regrets. When asked if they would still attend their institution if they could start over again, over three quarters (77%) say definitely or probably yes. Furthermore, when asked if they would recommend their institution to another student like them, 88% say yes.

Although the 2011 report findings are not drastically negative overall, it’s unclear whether SNAAP would be in a position to draw attention to a significant and sustained deterioration in these numbers in the future.

Data Comparability

SNAAP reports that the SNAAP respondent unemployment rate is less than half the national unemployment rate for all Americans, which in 2011 was 8.9%.This figure becomes less impressive when compared with the unemployment rate of college-educated Americans, which most SNAAP respondents are. The 2011 national unemployment rate for college graduates is 4%; for SNAAP respondents with a bachelor’s degree, it’s also 4%, and for those with a master’s, it’s 5%. Still, it would appear that arts alumni are not significantly better or worse off than college graduates with non-arts majors, which conflicts with the Georgetown research cited in the Kiplinger article. How could this be?

SNAAP explains that unlike Carnevale, Cheah and Strohl’s Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce study, its employment figures are based upon different measures than those used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The difference in employment numbers between data from SNAAP and from other sources may be due in part to SNAAP’s employment measures, which include intermittent work—not uncommon among professional artists—as among the ways of being employed. The U.S. Census, for example, would label such people as unemployed.

In particular, SNAAP may be counting severely underemployed respondents as employed because they identify as self-employed/ freelancers. Freelancers are often more affected than traditional employees during a recession, from which the US continues to recover. When pockets are tight and businesses aren’t growing, customers are more likely to view purchases of goods like art as luxuries, see participating in a continuing ed or community art class as optional, and need services like design less. In fact, BLS projects that employment opportunities for craft and fine artists will grow by 5% over the next decade, which is slower than the average 14.3% projected for all occupations.

Because of the nature of SNAAP, the project only collects data about arts alumni. However, in order to truly draw conclusions about the value of an arts degree, we would need to see data collected in the same way for a cross-section of majors. Unfortunately, one of the few metrics that could potentially serve as a common yardstick is complicated by SNAAP’s alternative approach to measuring employment status. SNAAP could easily have designed its survey to enable analysis of unemployment figures comparable to BLS statistics alongside numbers derived from the alternative method. It’s unclear why this path wasn’t taken.

Considering the Alternatives

Many of the questions in the SNAAP survey ask alumni about subjective impressions, like these:

In your opinion, how much did [INSTITUTION] help you acquire or develop each of the following skills and abilities?

Please describe how your arts training is or is not relevant to your current work.

Describe how your arts training at [INSTITUTION] is or is not relevant to your participation in civic and community life.

Certainly most arts alumni value the arts—that’s why they chose an arts major—and the SNAAP survey provides them with the opportunity to opine about the importance of the arts. But for most arts alumni, the choice was not between pursuing an arts degree or doing nothing. Instead, the choice was between studying the arts and studying something else. Or perhaps it was between pursing an arts-related graduate degree and gaining additional experience in the workplace, or investing in a home. Respondents weren’t asked to reflect upon the sacrifices that they might have made in choosing their field of study.

I have no doubt that the education that arts alumni received contributed to skill sets that are relevant to their primary employment and civic engagement. But it’s also possible that alumni may have developed equivalent or better skill sets related to their current employment with an alternative course of study. Still, it is encouraging to learn that most SNAAP respondents have found work “congruent with their values and dispositions” that affords them the opportunity to “demonstrate their creativity.”    

IMPLICATIONS

So what does this mean? Certainly not that the SNAAP study has no value, nor that arts education is worthless. But the SNAAP report is largely inconclusive. SNAAP respondents are not necessarily reflective of the larger pool of arts alumni. A significant proportion of the participating institutions have top-ranked arts programs. It’s possible that a sample with alumni from a greater range of arts programs would produce the same results, but it’s also possible that SNAAP’s sample is biased. The report also presents an alternative way of measuring employment data, which could be valuable in creating a more accurate view of the employment situations of those who freelance or are self-employed, regardless of whether that work is arts related. Unfortunately, absent a comprehensive employment survey across fields using SNAAP’s method, it tells us very little about arts alumni as compared to holders of college and graduate degrees as a whole.

As an artist, arts educator, and arts administrator, I want to believe that an arts education is always worth it. Certainly the median salary of arts alumni should not be the sole factor in determining its value. However, with the average student loan debt for recent college graduates at over $26,000, and many borrowing beyond that to pursue graduate degrees, financial considerations shouldn’t be eliminated from the equation entirely. As I read the SNAAP report, I found myself thinking about Vanderbilt University Law Professor Herwig Schlunk’s groundbreaking 2009 academic essay, “Mamas Don’t Let You Babies Grow Up To Be… Lawyers,” in which he calculates opportunity and out-of-pocket costs for law students, and the likely return for different types of students, depending upon their class rank and the prestige of their program. He concludes that for many, particularly average students graduating from second and third tier schools, law school is a losing proposition.

It’s not possible to determine for whom an arts education is a worthy investment because no similar study has been done for art students. The difficulty for SNAAP is that its first responsibility is to analyze data for paying customers, not to  use that data as field research to draw larger conclusions. Still, at this time SNAAP is the most comprehensive data resource available for pre-professional arts education.

Few people go into the arts for the money. It’s likely that most of us instinctively knew that the median salary of an arts major would be significantly less than that of an engineering or business major, even before Georgetown released their report. SNAAP’s report does tell us that although a career in the arts may not be incredibly lucrative, not all artists are starving. But it also reminds us that an education should be valued for more than the average earning potential of its graduates.

… the worth of an arts degree must be measured by both pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. Much has been made of recent reports using national income data showing that arts graduates have lower than average earnings… Tangible economic benefits are unquestionably important, but calibrating the success of arts graduates only by how much they make does a disservice not only to those who practice their art and apparently derive great satisfaction from doing so, but also to the communities they enrich with artistic contributions through sharing their artistic creations, teaching, and supporting other artists.

FURTHER READING

For those who would like to dig in to SNAAP’s data in more detail, the 2011 Aggregate Frequency Report is what you’re looking for.

The 2011 SNAAP Annual Report covers the 2010 survey, along with the 2010 Aggregate Frequency Report.

Danielle J, Lindemann and Steven J. Tepper’s SNAAP special report, “Painting With Broader Strokes: Reassessing the Value of an Arts Degree” addresses potential bias issues and further analyzes the 2010 survey findings.

SNAAP publishes nifty interactive visualizations of its survey data, called SnaapShots. Here is the SnaapShot of the 2011 survey data, and the previous version, SnaapShot 2010.

Daniel Luzer critiques the SNAAP survey bias in Washington Monthly.

The Kennedy Center discusses the survey.

SNAAP manager Sally Gaskill blogs about SNAAP’s findings for Americans for the Arts.

“Rhythm & Rest” by the Animus Collective, 2009″ at FIGMENT NYC
Photo Credit: Suzie Sims-Fletcher courtesy of FIGMENT

For the past two and a half years I’ve been involved with FIGMENT, a non-profit organization that produces participatory art events in a growing list of cities, including New York, Boston, DC, Detroit, Jackson and Pittsburgh. When I first joined FIGMENT in 2010, it had already grown from a one-day event on New York City’s Governors Island attended by about two thousand people in July of 2007 to an annual weekend-long participatory arts festival attended by tens of thousands. FIGMENT had begun to expand geographically, producing a weekend event in Boston, and temporally, with a dedicated summer-long FIGMENT area on the Governors Island featuring an artist-designed minigolf course and an interactive sculpture garden. Since then, the organization has continued to grow, with events and members in cities across the United States, and even internationally—there are plans for FIGMENT events in Canada and Australia. Last year, FIGMENT received its first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and this year it hired its first paid employee (the organization had previously been run entirely by volunteers). Also for the first time this year, FIGMENT will be providing some artists a small stipend beyond the cost of materials. Past Createquity Writing Fellow Katherine Gressel also works with FIGMENT, and recently profiled the organization’s growth in a piece for Americans for the Arts.

Because of my own personal investment in FIGMENT, I’ve become increasingly interested in the effects of institutional support on alternative arts organizations and projects. This grassroots/alternative arts group is hiring paid staff, providing artist compensation, creating guidelines and consistent branding for events, and receiving more mainstream institutional support and recognition. How will its ability to carry out of its principles, which include participation, decommodification, inclusion and access, be affected?

To understand what FIGMENT might encounter in the future, I thought I’d investigate how more established non-profit arts organizations have fared during similar transitions. Perhaps the organization can benefit by looking at the successes and pitfalls of other groups.

In 1974, a trio of actors founded the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a Deerfield, Illinois Unitarian church with a commitment to ensemble collaboration and artistic risk. The company’s stated mission was to “advance the vitality and diversity of American theater by nurturing artists, encouraging repeatable creative relationships and contributing new works to the national canon.” In the past nearly 40 years, the organization has had numerous expansions—first to the basement of a Catholic school, then to a 134-seat theater at the Jane Hull House Center in Chicago, again to a 211-seat space at 2851 North Halsted Street in Chicago, and finally to its present home, a theater complex at 1650 North Halsted. Today, Steppenwolf is an ensemble of 43 artists, including actors, directors, playwrights and filmmakers, with an annual audience of over 200,000 and an operating budget of $13.5 million. The company has won numerous awards, including a National Medal of Arts and a Tony Award for regional excellence.

As Steppenwolf has evolved, it has remained financially solvent while strengthening its community engagement, even as many performing arts organizations are struggling with a decline in subscription rates, or tickets for an entire season of programming can be renewed annually. In fact, Steppenwolf has also suffered from attrition in subscriptions, which means a decline in a steady, predictable stream of revenue. However, the organization used this funding issue as an opportunity to re-examine its core values. A 2011 study by the Wallace Foundation on building arts audiences profiled Steppenwolf’s strategy for building deeper relationships with both subscribers and non-subscribers. The paper outlined the company’s “Public Square” initiative, which included post-show discussions after every performance led by facilitators who are specifically trained to progress a dialogue within the audience; additional online content, with access to interviews, articles, podcasts and videos for each production on its website; and a series of social events that are free and open to the public and offer the opportunity to explore thematic elements of current productions. The strategy led to a 61% increase in multi-performance ticket sales, as well a deeper level of audience engagement. In short, Steppenwolf’s institutionalization has not resulted in the compromise of its values, but instead has actually furthered them.

Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco is another organization that has maintained and expanded its mission since its inception forty years ago. Founded in a former bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, it began as an interdenominational space that sought to bridge artistic and spiritual ideas. The organization produced alternative musical performances, theater pieces, screenings, readings and workshops. Four expansions and relocations later, Intersection continues to provide such programming in addition to maintaining a gallery space, sponsoring artist residencies with individuals and collectives, and promoting community engagement via collaborative and educational opportunities. In fact, it is such an established cultural institution that in a 2005 San Francisco Chronicle article, Visual Arts, Literary and Jazz Program Director Kevin Chen acknowledged that “Intersection is no longer alternative.” But far from losing its way, Intersection has become an institution that smaller, alternative organizations now look to for support.

The success stories of Steppenwolf and Intersection for the Arts have achieved an almost mythic quality in Chicago and San Francisco—it’s the dream that that many non-profit arts organizations aspire to. But for every Steppenwolf or Intersection, there are multiple failures like The Franklin Street Arts Center, Collective for Living Cinema, Minor Injury and Matzo Files. It’s more difficult to find information on these defunct spaces and groups, which can seem to disappear in a day. Some began expanding, and then folded due to lack of funding, or were absorbed by a larger, more mainstream entity, resulting in a compromise of artistic vision and mission.

P.S.1 is one such example of an alternative arts organization that expanded beyond its means. Founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss through the Institute for Art and Urban Resources, an organization that developed exhibitions in abandoned spaces across New York City, the center’s original mission was to showcase young artists and offer an exhibition space for risk-taking works that weren’t necessarily saleable or commercially viable. From 1994-7 P.S.1 underwent an $8.5 million gut renovation and expansion, adding an elevator and sculpture garden and redesigning their galleries. Although its subsequent 2000 merger with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was billed as a win for both organizations, enhancing MoMA’s contemporary art initiatives and giving P.S.1 access to MoMA’s collection and marketing resources, in reality, P.S.1 needed a larger institution to rescue it after the expansion had depleted its financial resources. Now renamed MoMA PS1, the Museum of Modern Art controls the center’s finances and has the right to appoint its board members. In 2008, after a planned 7-year transition period for the center and MoMA, Heiss was forced into retirement. In his 2008 New York Magazine article, Andrew M. Goldstein recounts his lunchtime conversation with Heiss and Glenn Lowry, MoMA’s director:

“I told him I didn’t want to retire,” Heiss explains. “And he said, ‘Why not?’ I said, ‘Well, I want to work another couple of years.’ And he said, ‘I think I’m going to go ahead on the retirement plan.’ And now we’re talking about what I might do.” Lowry says the discussions are ongoing—“These are not easy conversations”—but he made clear that he and MoMA’s board considered Heiss’s retirement necessary for P.S. 1’s evolving future within MoMA. “From my perspective, the seven-year period was a transition period; the goal was to get to know each other and make things work, and then at the end of that transition period to move on,” he says.

P.S.1’s institutional expansion—the addition of space and staff, as well as the support it received from the established MoMA–transformed it from an alternative arts space to a branch of a commercial contemporary art museum. It now throws parties sponsored by Volkswagen, and launches exhibitions anchored by established artists who can draw crowds. Recent and current exhibitions at MoMA PS1 include a Kraftwerk installation that coincided with the electronic-music pioneers’ MoMA retrospective; “September 11,” which showed work by heavyweight artists like Diane Arbus, John Chamberlain, William Eggleston, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Alex Katz, Barbara Kruger and Yoko Ono; and a solo show of work by Huma Bhaba, who has work in the collections of The Whitney, The Saatchi Gallery, MoMA, and the Met. The final Warm Up of this year was DJed by Thom Yorke’s new project Atoms for Peace. This programming may be worthy in its own right, but it’s not the risky programming meant to give emerging artists a platform that the original P.S.1 was founded on. Administrative practices that enable sustained revenue should allow for more risk-taking and challenging work, but unfortunately, as with P.S.1, this is often not the result.

Building—creating a space or expanding a space– is arguably the purest form of institutionalization. It’s a concrete statement that an organization intends to be around for the long-term. “Set in Stone,” a recent study by the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, examined the results of the physical expansions of cultural organizations between 1994 and 2008, drawing on data from more than 700 construction projects. The authors looked at how new facilities related to organizations’ missions; the additional staff, technical support and marketing expertise needed to effectively operate new spaces; how new facilities helped or did not help organizations to engage the surrounding communities; and the relationship of funding streams to new spaces. The final report explains:

In many cases, the actual need for a new facility had not been demonstrated (even though there was often great enthusiasm about getting underway with construction); the connection between a new facility and delivering more effectively on mission was in many instances quite murky; realism about how a new facility could be sustained once built was frequently missing – both in terms of the financial resources and staff needed to successfully run a new facility. The list goes on. New facilities would open, organizations would then run into financial problems because of insufficient revenue, or an inadequate endowment, or because they couldn’t service the debt they incurred to build, or because the building was too costly to operate, or it turned out to be beyond the organization’s capacity to administer and sustain.

Although most of the organizations, projects and budgets in this study are much larger than FIGMENT or other young alternative arts organizations, the takeaway is still relevant: The most successful projects were motivated by both artistic mission and organizational need. Project leadership was clear, consistent and sustained throughout the process, leaders provided efficient timelines and effect feedback, and expenses were controlled during construction. While this study was specifically about physical expansions, I also believe that these points hold true for other types of expansions, such as in staff or geography.

With all of this in mind, then, the question remains: how can FIGMENT remain “alternative” even as it receives more mainstream support?

FIGMENT strives to provide opportunities for emerging artists to showcase interactive works that wouldn’t necessarily be commercially successful. The group quite literally takes art out of the museum or gallery, primarily using outdoor spaces such as public parks for its events. According to FIGMENT co-founder and executive producer Dave Koren, this strategy has helped FIGMENT remain inclusive and accessible by showcasing a broad array of work from many artists in large, free spaces that are easily reached by the public. FIGMENT’s open call for project proposals also facilitates a transparent and wide-ranging curatorial process. FIGMENT once decided not to go forward with an event in Mexico City because there wasn’t enough time to do an open call for art there. The organizers there had proposed to approach specific artists and collectives, but FIGMENT decided that handpicking people and projects for the event would privilege particular groups and run counter to the organization’s principles.

Koren says that this open call process is especially important when there is a limited amount of space, as there is in FIGMENT’s season-long area on Governors Island, which includes an architectural pavilion, an interactive sculpture garden, and an artist-designed minigolf course. Works are chosen for this exhibition via an open call for proposals with specific, intensive guidelines and a rigorous jury evaluation.

As FIGMENT expands to new cities, ensuring that the new organizers, teams and artists understand FIGMENT’s mission is not always easy. “They get the big picture, but not always the specifics that it involves,” Koren says. He recounted one group that planned to have a bar tent with beer for sale, similar to what one usually finds at an outdoor concert. He had to clarify to them that this would violate FIGMENT’s decommodification principle. “FIGMENT seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We will not substitute consumption for experience.” FIGMENT events aren’t places to sell things, whether that be art or food or beer. For that reason, FIGMENT doesn’t want to endorse a vendor, or rely on commercial vendors as a source of revenue.

FIGMENT has recently been the recipient of some substantial grants, including one from the NEA, and the group continues to apply for funding in the form of grants from foundations. However, the group is wary of relying on these grants as a main source of revenue. Many grants have very specific criteria; it’s important that the group doesn’t lose sight of its own mission while trying to fit a grant’s standards. Ultimately, as FIGMENT builds its community, it hopes to build its donor base along with it. According to Koren, “what we’re seeing is that someone first comes to FIGMENT as an artist, then takes a greater role as a team member, and then also becomes a donor.” It’s this community of donors, it is hoped, who will sustain FIGMENT.

Institutionalization in the form of paid staff, money for artists, and physical or geographical expansion results in budget increases. Therefore, financial support from other institutions as well as from a group’s community also need to grow. The challenge for alternative arts organizations is in both growing that revenue and not compromising on artistic mission and principles. Will FIGMENT remain FIGMENT—retaining its essence and principles as it expands to Texas and California and Australia and beyond? Will its institutionalization further its mission, or weaken it? Will support from major funders lead to a realignment of values? Only time will tell, but the best predictors may be those outlined in the “Set in Stone” study: motivation, leadership and implementation. If these are the criteria, FIGMENT seems to be positioning itself well for the challenges ahead.

Can food be art?
Image courtesy of Jacquelyn Strycker

Last night, I cooked broccoli rabe with caramelized onions and vegan fennel sausage, along with a creamy parmesan polenta and a crusty whole wheat rosemary bread made from the Camaldoli sourdough culture that I feed flour to each day. Like many artists I know, I love to cook. My bookshelves are filled with equal numbers of art books and cookbooks. I often spend between one and two hours making dinner each night. I used to feel guilty about this—worried that my time would be better spent in my studio drawing or printing or otherwise artmaking—but then I came to see that making food—combining textures, flavors, scents and colors—is also creative. Indeed, I know many artists who are also passionate about food, and have come to consider food a part of their practices. A recent New York Times opinion piece even claims that food “has replaced art as high culture.” Yet the same article argues that food is not art.

Proust on the madeleine is art; the madeleine itself is not art.

A good risotto is a fine thing, but it isn’t going to give you insight into other people, allow you to see the world in a new way, or force you to take an inventory of your soul.

Is this true, or do chefs deserve a place at the table with painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians and performers? Can food be art?

In fact, there’s a long tradition of food as artistic medium. A paper by Howard Coutts and Ivam Day published by the Henry Moore Foundation describes the European sugar sculpture, porcelain and table layouts from the 16^th through 19^th centuries. Dining was not just about eating food, but also about its elaborate display. Tables were adorned with sculptures made from marzipan, wax or sugar paste. Court artists and designers “of the highest caliber” were the creators of these edible works. Coutts and Day describe an 1815 feast given in the Great Hall of the Louvre by the Royal Guard to celebrate the final defeat of Napoleon:

Huge pièces montées, in the form of gilded sugar military trophies, crafted by the patissier Carême, were displayed between the tables. At this level, table decorations were an aspect of political and social prestige, and required the skills of the finest artists and craftsmen of the time.

More recently, we can look at German artist Wolfgang Laib’s milkstones and rice pieces. Laib’s milkstones are large square slabs of marble that have been hollowed out and filled with milk, resulting in reflective white squares. His “Unlimited Ocean” was a grid of 30,000 piles of rice installed at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Laib uses these natural materials to create ephemeral and sensual experiences.

Leah Foster’s “Muffin Tops”
Image courtesy of the artist

Similarly, we can also look at the work of emerging artist Leah Foster, who has created elaborate installations using cupcakes. For Muffin Tops, she used thousands of cupcakes and glazed surfaces of the gallery with batter and frosting.

But food as medium is not the same as declaring that a meal is art. We get closer to this with relational aesthetics and social practice, which often use food to facilitate social interaction and community. Last year, Rirkrit Tiravanija replicated his installation, Untitled (Free/ Still) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Museum goers were able to enter a gallery and receive a bowl of vegetarian thai curry over rice, take some water from a stocked refrigerator and then sit at one of several communal tables. The work was originally installed at 303 gallery over 20 years ago. The artist describes the original installation in a conversation with MoMA’s Director, Glenn Lowry.

So when you first walk in, what you see is kind of haphazard storage space. But as you approached this you could start to smell the jasmine rice. That kind of draws you through to the office space. And in this place I made two pots of curries, green curries. One was made how Thai restaurants in New York were making it. To counter that, on the other pot was a authentically made Thai curry. I was working on the idea of food, but in a kind of anthropological and archeological way. It was a lot about the layers of taste and otherness.

A Fallen Fruit Collective “public fruit jam”
Photo credit: Julian Bleeker

Fallen Fruit Collective is another example of participatory art involving food. David Burns, Matias Viegner and Austin Young use fruit as a material to explore notions of “urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community.” One of their most popular projects are their “public fruit jams” in which they invite members of the community to bring fruit and collaborate with one another to make jams. The collective explains:

Working without recipes, we ask people to sit with others they do not already know and negotiate what kind of jam to make: if I have lemons and you have figs, we’d make lemon fig jam (with lavender). Each jam is a social experiment. Usually held in a gallery or museum, this event forefronts the social and public nature of Fallen Fruit’s work, and we consider it a collaboration with the public as well as each other.

But ultimately the aforementioned projects are art first and food second. We don’t really care how Tiravanija’s curry or Fallen Fruit Collective’s jams taste; food is the means to creating a social work. Rather than art made from food (food as medium), or art that uses food to create an experience (food as impetus), is there art that is food that is art?

Future Farmers Victory Garden Seeds
Photo Credit: Mark Simpkins

We start to get there if we look at small-scale food production. Community gardens are now often viewed as both organic, local food sources and art projects. Victory Gardens 2007+ is a project developed by Garden for the Environment and the City of San Francisco’s Department for the Environment with “lead artist” Amy Franceschini. Both an art project and a model/ support system for urban gardening, they’ve received funding from art institutions like SFMOMA and the Fleishhacker Foundation. The project aims to create a network of “urban farmers” who utilize rooftops, window boxes, backyards and unused plots of land for food production. It includes the development and distribution of seed starter kits to home gardeners, food-production educational initiatives and the development of a city seed bank. The success of the gardens and seed bank are integral to the success of the project, making it equally about art and food production.

If food production can be art, why don’t we also consider the cooking of food as art? Combining and transforming materials is a fundamentally creative activity, whether those materials are paints, clays, musical notes or edible ingredients. In fact, gastronomy is even included in some countries’ ministries of cultural affairs. The embassy of Peru’s Public Diplomacy department lists “gastronomy, including the promotion of the Peruvian national drink, Pisco,” in the six types of cultural programming that the embassy supports, alongside visual arts exhibitions, cinema and music. Last year, Spain’s Ministry of Culture partnered with Casa Asia, the Cervantes Institute and the Spanish Embassy New Delhi to promote Spanish “culture industries” in India. The programming included a lecture from José Luis Galiana of Basque Culinary Center, the first university-level education centre in Gastronomic Sciences in Europe. And, in 2010, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) honored the “gastronomic meal of the French” as part of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.”

If cuisine can be recognized as culture, then why aren’t we also acknowledging it as art? At street fairs in Brooklyn and on etsy.com, handcrafted, small batch artisanal foods like habanero ketchup, black garlic mayo, buffalo jerky and sea salt chocolate caramels are sold alongside knit scarves, hand sewn quilts, embroidered tea towels and beaded jewelry. The most recent Renegade Craft Fair— a juried marketplace of handmade goods– had vendors selling items like letterpress stationary, molded soaps, screenprinted t-shirts, ceramics and carved wood furniture, as well as local honey, cookies, spices and bonbons, and offerings from Chickpea & Olive and La Crêpe C’est Si Bon. The DIY movement has embraced food as craft.

The design community has also begun welcoming cuisine into the fold. Core77 Design Awards includes a category for “Food Design.” The Vitra Design Museum Boisbuchet in France has hosted a lecture by food photographer, designer and cookbook author Emilie Baltz. And in 2011, I attended Talk to Me: A Symposium at MoMA, a program that featured presentations and panel discussions related to the Architecture and Design’s concurrent exhibition, Talk to Me: Design and Communication between People and Objects. Marcus Samuelsson, the acclaimed Ethiopian-born and Swedish-raised chef and owner of Red Rooster Harlem was one of the panelists. Samuelsson passed out spiced nuts to rapt audience members, and spoke about how he designed the menu at his restaurant so that it would reflect the diversity of the Harlem community in which it’s located: dishes include soul food and Dominican cuisine with nods to Samuelsson’s own Swedish heritage, all using foods from local farmers and artisans. He was both chef and designer.

An edible menu from Moto
Photo credit: Seth Anderson

We can also look at molecular gastronomy as a point of intersection between design and food. Also referred to as modernist cuisine, it involves the application of scientific principles to cooking in order to create surprising and inventive aesthetics and textures in food. At Moto, a Chicago restaurant that specializes in this type of cooking, diners may be served a deconstructed/ reconstructed avocado, be asked to put on a smoked glove to eat a chocolate dish, and finish their meal with a printed elderflower-marshmallow menu. The restaurant’s kitchen includes a lab where chefs conduct technological experiments to create innovative dishes with flavors that often seem incongruous to their appearance, disrupting diners’ notions of what food can be.

The art world is beginning to notice. In October, Suzanne Anker, Chair of the BFA Fine Arts department at the School of Visual Arts, organized a conference called “Molecular Cuisine: The Politics of Taste” that investigated “the importance of taste from the perspectives of the culinary arts, sociology, art history and theory, anthropology, as well as the cognitive, material and biological sciences.” Anker’s projects at SVA include overseeing the creation of a Nature and Technology Lab, where, among other things, students can experiment with alternative growing systems like aquaponics, and a molecular gastronomy kit that gives them the tools to create items like olive oil foam, balsamic vinegar caviar and strawberry spaghetti.

The Edible Schoolyard at MLK Middle School in Berkeley
Photo credit: mental.masala

But it shouldn’t just be novel high-tech cooking techniques that warrant our attention. The art world needs to include chefs like Marcus Samuelsson, Alice Waters, David Chang and Christian Puglisi in its conversation as well. Waters’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, opened over four decades ago with seasonal menus created from organic, locally-sourced ingredients, serving as a model and inspiration for the locavore and slow food movements. Her Edible Schoolyard Project, begun in 1996, integrates gardening, cooking and sharing school lunch into the academic curriculums of participating institutions. Chang’s Momofuku empire serves food that combines techniques from and pays homage to wildly varying fare including Asian street food, French cuisine and McDonald’s. Puglisi’s Relea is committed to providing creative, organic, environmentally responsible meals while simultaneously eliminating the exclusivity associated with fine dining. These chefs aren’t just cooking inventive and delicious cuisine. They are also using food to tell stories, conjure memories, and to establish philosophies, such as a connection between cooking, community and sustainability.

The arts, including painting, sculpture, installation, dance and music, are in part about creating a sensory experience—something for the audience to see, feel or hear. And perhaps more than any other discipline, food has the ability to appeal to all of our senses—a combination of colors, textures, crunches, smells and tastes goes into the making of a meal, and the selection and transformation of those elements is creative. When a creative, sensory form also has the capacity to express philosophies, inspire multiple interpretations, conjure narratives and/or allude to complex meanings, it is art, whether the medium is paint or piano or polenta. Food has not replaced art as high culture; it is art.

“The University of Trash: at the Sculpture Center
Photo by Graham Coreil-Allen

Artist-founded and administered schools have existed for over a century. In 1875, a group of artists pinned a notice to the bulletin board of the National Academy of Design inviting students and instructors to attend a meeting, effectively founding The Art Students League in New York City. In 1919, the German architect Walter Gropius started Bauhaus, an institution that merged fine arts and applied arts in pursuit of the “gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art). His manifesto declared:

Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that   will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come.

And in 1933, the scholar John A. Rice began the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It was owned and operated by its faculty, which included artists, musicians and poets such as Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Charles Olsen. The school believed in an interdisciplinary approach to education and combined communal living and farm work with classwork.

Over the past five years or so, there’s been a resurgence of artist-operated schools.  However, what differentiates these new exploratory educational practices from their historical predecessors is that the schools themselves are also the art, framed as participatory, collaborative community projects. Rather than using physical materials to construct a work that may comment on a social condition, the artists use language, thought and action to construct social spaces. Their art schools destabilize one’s notion of a school by placing it in a museum, a house, a park or a gallery while asking participants to work collaboratively, creating a shared sense of space. There’s precedent for this: Joseph Beuys first coined the term “social sculpture” in the 1960’s to describe interdisciplinary and participatory action-based work. Let’s take a look at some of these art schools as artworks:

The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s “Teach 4 Amerika” school bus
Photo Credit: Matt Kowal

The Bruce High Quality Foundation University

Founders: The Bruce High Quality Foundation, a mostly anonymous New York City-based arts collective. Most of the Bruces met while studying at Cooper Union.

Sample Course Offerings: “BYOU (Build Your Own University),” “Drawing Extensions,” “The Language of Love: Intro to Italian” and “XXXTreme Performance Studies”

Cost: Free

The Gist: Embracing a collaborative learning model where “students are teachers are administrators are staff,” the BHQFU claims to be “a community of scholars” and “a ‘f*** you’ to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair.”

Artists at Mildred’s Lane
Photo by Naya Peek

Mildred’s Lane

Founders: Artists Mark Dion and J. Morgan Puett

Sample Course Offerings: “Attention Labs with The Order of the Third Bird” and “PondHouseSpringHousePond”

Cost: $3000 (includes room and board)

The Gist: “Life is a studio” in this northeastern Pennsylvania communal art space where participants live and “collaboratively work with internationally renowned artists” who direct each session. An iteration of the working-living-researching-making environment is included in the Museum of Modern Art Education Department’s MoMA Studio, and, through discussions, meals and other interactions, “invites visitors to explore inventive forms of domesticity, tactile qualities related to textiles and the natural states of food.”

PIckpocket Almanack at Artissima 17
Photo by Joseph Del Pesco

Pickpocket Almanack

Founder: Contemporary art curator Joseph del Pesco

Sample Course Offerings: “Celebrating Dilettantism,” “Revolutionary Experimental Cinema in the Bay Area” and “Do-It-Yourself, Together”

Cost: Free

The Gist: “An experimental school-without-walls,” commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2009-10, curriculum used existing lectures, screenings, workshops and other public events in the Bay Area as its starting point, and then took them “out of context” for a new “thematic frame” and “unexpected discoveries.” Discussions happened online.

Anton Vidokle’s “Exhibition as School” including “Night School” archives
Photo by Knoxville Museum of Art

Night School

Founder: Artist and e-flux founder Anton Vidokle

Sample Course Offerings: seminars led by Boris Groys, Martha Rosler and Liam Gillick

Cost: Free

The Gist: Part of Vidokle’s series of temporary school projects, this iteration was hosted by New Museum in 2008. The program included a lecture series open to the public as well as additional workshops and discussions for a core group of 26 accepted applicants.

Portrait Drawing Round Robin at the University of Trash
Photo by Peter Walsh Projects

The “Skool of Refuse and Appropriation” at The University of Trash

Founders: Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman

Sample Course Offerings: “How to Stay Free,” “Supersede Yourself” and “Freeing the Airwaves from Corporate Control”

Cost: Free

The Gist: free and open to the public during summer 2009, the temporary, makeshift university as exhibition hosted lectures, workshops and screenings. Resources included stages, a low power FM radio station, internet, hammocks and a grill, and participants were invited to “teach a class, hold band practice, contribute to zine library or propose any project!”

School of the Future

Founders: Artists Cassie Thorton and Chris Kennedy

Sample Course Offerings: “Mutant Student Groups Think Tank,” “Compost Brigade,” “Philosophy Yoga,” and “Gender, Identity and Making Mustaches”

Cost: Free

The Gist: The “un-school” was first an “outdoor intergenerational free school” run by artists, activists and teachers in industrial north Brooklyn.  It has since become “an archive of lessons learned and a network of radical educators who question our current forms of education.”

A Trade School class in London
Photo by Canning Town Cara

Trade School

Founders: OurGoods co-founders Louise Ma, Rich Watts and Caroline Woolard

Sample Course Offerings: “Pilates in a Chair,” “Caviar: Demystified,” “Portrait Photography “ and “Baudrillard Camp: Media Theory vs Literary Criticism”

Cost: Participants pay for classes by bartering goods and services

The Gist: “Trade School celebrates practical wisdom, mutual respect and the social nature of exchange” and has been endorsed by socially-engaged-art heavyweight Pablo Helguera. They recently participated in Parsons’ Art, Environment, Action!“creative teaching laboratory and environmental ‘artshop.’”

Mike Perry’s “Wondering Around Wandering”
Photo by Meredith Jenks, courtesy of the artist’s website

Wondering Around Wandering

Founder: Graphic designer and artist Mike Perry

Sample Course Offerings: “IMAG(in)ING the CITY,” “Never Nude!” and “Mega Zine”

Cost: Free

The Gist: Graphic Designer Mike Perry created a free three-month “exhibition and community event space” to coincide with the launch of his monograph. Perry and other designers conducted workshops, screenings, gatherings and open discussions where visitors could “explore freely and create their own unique experiences.”

*

Some of these education-as-art projects, most notably the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, have been posited or lauded as progressive and practical alternatives to the increasingly expensive Master of Fine Arts (MFA) education from accredited art colleges and universities. The Bruces explain:

Something’s got to give. The $200,000-debt-model of art education is simply untenable. Further, the education artists are getting for their money is mired in irrelevance, pushing them into critical redundancy on the one hand and professional mediocrity on the other.

Could programs such as these eventually replace our current institution-centric paradigm? I find the premise somewhat disingenuous and unrealistic. Many of the participants of the alternative art schools are either current MFA candidates, or have already received an MFA. And many of the lecturers or faculty are also faculty at universities—they’ve hardly rejected the academy. What’s more, the rigor of the course offerings for the art-school-projects wildly fluctuates, from seminars on Marxism to analyzing the dim sum offerings in Chinatown. Although the latter is interesting and arguably, the ability to differentiate between dumplings is a far more practical skill than being able to pontificate on the finer points of Foucault, it’s also not something one could receive credit for in graduate school. Finally, regardless of the intellectual and instructional level of materials, in all of these programs, there’s no consequence for failing to complete the homework or not engaging in a discussion. No degree is withheld, because there are no degrees.

And of course, this is the point. These art schools offer a re-imagining of our arts educational system. Yet, so many of the artists involved in these projects have formal arts degrees and continue to have positive relationships with traditional academic institutions—as faculty, guest lecturers and even students, that it’s difficult for me to trust that they genuinely believe in their institutions as replacements for the current model. Their true purpose is not as higher-ed replacement, but as an exploration of art’s value in a learning environment.

In this sense, these art schools as art projects are the purest form of education— the reward for one’s efforts is not a certificate, but instead, learning. In fact, that’s why these new alternative art schools are most intriguing. Unlike their historical predecessors, they aren’t meant to replace the art college/university model. In part, that’s why these new art schools are also artworks. They are social sculptures where pedagogy is a means to another end—participatory, socially engaged, community based art projects, education as exhibition.

A painting made by Harold Cohen’s computer program, AARON. Photo by Conall O’Brien

If a computer composes a symphony, should the resulting musical piece be considered a work of art? And how does a computer-generated work affect our perception of human-made works? These are not theoretical questions. A recent article in Pacific Standard highlights Simon Fraser University’s Metacreation project, which aims to investigate computational creativity, in part through the development of “artificially creative musical systems.”

This past June, three members of the project— researchers Arne Eigenfeldt, Adam Burnett and Philippe Pasquiere— presented an evaluation study of their musical works composed by software programs at the 2012 International Conference on Computational Creativity. At a public concert in which both human-composed and computer-assisted music were performed by a professional string quartet, percussionist and a Disklavier (a mechanized piano that interprets computer input), audience members were unable to differentiate between music generated by a computer and music written by a human composer, regardless of their familiarity with classical music.

The Metacreation project is not the only example of advances in artificial intelligence (AI). David Cope’s Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI) is a software system that analyzes existing music, and then generates original compositions in the same style. What’s more, such advances aren’t limited to musical arrangements. In 2008, the Russian publishing house Astrel SPb released True Love, a 320-page novel written in 72 hours by a computer program. And the Tate Gallery, SFMOMA and the Brooklyn Museum are among the institutions that have exhibited paintings made by AARON, an autonomous art-making program created by Harold Cohen. Indeed, computers’ capabilities now rival cognitive functions once thought to be intrinsically human. Computers can form links, evaluate, and even make novel works; they can function in ways that we think of as creative. The obvious question is, if computers are performing creatively, should we consider the resulting works art?

The simplest answer, and in many ways most appealing to the human ego, is that no, these computers are not making art. Art requires intention. This is why projects like Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 1993 (Café Deutschland), in which the artist set up a functioning cafe in a private gallery in Cologne, or Lee Mingwei’s The Living Room, in which Mr. Lee transformed a gallery into a living room and selected volunteers to act as hosts, are art; their makers intended them as such. By contrast, EMI, AARON and other AI systems have no sentient intentions to make art, or anything else. Therefore, the works they create are not art, although they could be considered as such if a human had made them. Instead, it’s the software itself that is the art, and its programmers the artists.

By this reasoning, even if the computer-generated works are, in fact, works of art, they are authored not by the computer, but by human software designers. The computer is merely a tool for making art, analogous to a brush or musical instrument. As a 2010 Pacific Standard article “The Cyborg Composer” quotes EMI’s creator David Cope: