17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
Stupid is as stupid does. The “Western Canon” is the basis upon which a great majority of Western Art is built. Architecture, paintings, literature and film all have inherent references to the Western Canon.
Of course there are other cultures that produce and produced art, there is no reason those cannot also be taught. But if you have no understanding of the basics you won’t fully grasp anything that flows from it. Cancelling such a course is destructive, not instructive.
Used to be a course demanded of all liberal arts students. An overview of western history through art. Gotta make those kids ignorant and ungrateful of their culture.
Vince Scully was an amazing announcer for baseball games for what—60 years?—until his recent retirement. I had no idea he taught art history at Yale on the side.
Decades old and once taught by famous Yale professors like Vincent Scully,
It looks as if Hillsdale, Grove City, and Liberty are the places to get a TRUE education.
We do need more art history majors.
Otherwise, who will fetch my coffee at Starbucks?
I had enrolled in the Art History Survey course with the preconceived notion that it would be memorizing artist's names, dates and the titles of paintings. I ultimately came to the conclusion that when taught properly and passionately, Art History is perhaps the most comprehensive of all the liberal arts.
If one wants to truly understand media, particularly if one is going to go the restoration/preservation route, one must understand a little chemistry. If one is going to understand the qualities and characteristics of even the most basic pigments, one is signing up for a class in animals, vegetables and minerals. If one studies architecture, there must be a basic understanding of engineering and geometry. No art is produced in a vacuum, so to research a piece and understand the subject matter as fully as possible one needs to examine history, mythology, theology, literature, aesthetics, semiotics, philosophy etc.
Sadly, like much of academia, many art history departments are infested by those who wish to push a leftist agenda. If one wants a tremendous introduction to western art with an unapologetic view of the accomplishments of old, dead white men, go to YouTube and watch Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series the BBC aired in 1969. Art history as it should be taught.
Thirty years ago, when I started college. I asked a friend from high school who was a year ahead at the same college, “What course can I take where I’ll meet good looking girls?” His answer: “Art History.” He was right.
They enroll at Yale for the connections. How else to get a comfy government position.
The fish rots from the head down, we need to make these people utterly irrelevant in our lives.
Presumably it was supposed to be an excellent course. If the faculty can’t get over their feelings of guilt and self-hatred over their association with a great civilization, they should just rename it “History of Western Art” and let kids who are interested in their cultural heritage learn about it. Then they can add whatever courses they want in Asian Art and African Art and Caribbean Art or whatever to assuage any residual shame they maintain over Michelangelo, Van Gogh and the rest of that crew.
Just following in the footsteps of University of Pennsylvania (founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1740, before the American Revolution), which allowed student activists of color to remove the portrait of William Shakespeare that had hung in the English Department for over a century, to be replaced by a portrait an obscure lesbian of color no one has ever heard of. She’s intersectionally oppressed, though. /s
Sad!
“Hey Hey Ho Ho Western Civ Has Got to Go!”
What makes them uneasy is the clear superiority of Neo-classical and Renaissance oil paintings and sculptures: they are amazing. Nothing anywhere rises to that level.
Hey, mon, we hates da white folks.