I found this list [the GoodArt internet forum] through the ARC website and I come to you all seeking advice.
A group of students (including myself) have expressed an intense dissatisfaction with the education we are receiving at our university. For example: to receive a BA we are merely required to take 60 credits of art classes (including art history!) out of the 180 credits required by the university to graduate. This however is not the main source of disillusionment among the student body. Our main motive is to reshape a curriculum where we are taught how to draw from life, paint from life, understand color theory, anatomy, perspective... in essence the fundamentals every artist should posses.
The department has modeled the program after the Bauhaus school of art. This has proven to be completely ineffective. The program focuses solely on conceptual art and care little if any for the fundamentals.
Dialogue between the student body and the chair has been open. As a student I truly feel I have an opportunity to have an impact on the restructuring of the curriculum. The main obstacles are (according to the Chair) the faculty themselves!
We know, due to the state university setting, we can't turn the school into an "Academy of Fine Art" per se, but our goal is to get as close to one as possible.
At this point I need to provide the chair with model. However, I simply don't know of any state university with a solid art program to use as a reference in a proposal to the chair. For that matter, a lot of the fine art academy websites I've gone to don't really share their class sequences per discipline (note: our focus is on painting).
Thanks
All the best,
-NN
