Art's Expanding Mission

A colleague pointed me to this Times article elucidating the role university art museums are playing on college campuses everywhere:

In the 21st century, university art museums have become more aggressive in extending their missions and collections to reach deeper into classrooms and curriculums not ordinarily associated with art. At Duke’s seven-year-old Nasher Museum, two members of its 30-person staff are devoted exclusively to finding uses for pieces from the collection to enhance course work in various academic departments. Medical students, for instance, spend a day studying visual art in an exercise intended to hone observation and description skills that Nasher staff member developed with professors.

A Duke professor of geology uses the museum’s collection of art carved from stone for lessons on the influence of time, oceans and weather.

In both instances, Nasher’s academic coordinators helped their colleagues in medicine and geology use art to interest students heavily influenced by the visual immediacy of the Internet, and to be aware that their careers were likely to include colleagues and alliances outside the United States.

“Students need to learn things and to be innovative and entrepreneurial in this new global world,” said Ms. Rorschach. “Art is about communicating effectively, about communicating visually, about understanding.” 

Could not say this better myself, ma'am. Now as much as ever, our students need to understand what an important role the arts play in their educations and will play in their careers - no matter what those careers are. They are here to become better people and citizens than they are already are; better, more creative entrepreneurs and negotiators, business people, doctors, lawyers and scientists, teachers to other people. If students graduate somehow believing the arts don't play a pivotal role in fulfilling their own professional potential - they are not getting full value from a university degree. That may sound crass and transactional, but many people look at higher education in just this way. The academy perhaps shouldn't be above relating its mission in this parlance. Get everything you can while you are on campus. Cultivate a better you - and succeed.

Okay, sermonette over. Let's go the museum tonight.

Image: Pin & Roll by Isobel Parker Mills (Fabric design student, Lamar Dodd School of Art) Colors: Nylon, Boatyard, Carnation and Periwinkle