The Eye, the Hand, the Mind: 100 Years of the College Art Association

2. The Beginnings: "Art for higher education, and higher education for Artists"

19 The College Art Association of America has a great work to accomplish. We stand for the right of the American student in our higher institutions of learning to instruction in that subject which is at the same time most cultural to the minds of the learners and most practical in its effects on their lives . . . the infinite field of art. . . . So we will turn our weapons, not towards each other, but towards the common enemy, the commercial, the vicious, and the ugly and adopt as our slogan: Art for higher education, and higher education for Artists.1 This chapter presents the big picture—both the context in which the College Art Association was founded in 1911 and the first and most comprehensive purpose—“to promote art interests in all divisions of American colleges and universities.” With minor alterations, this purpose stood alone for fifty years. Five additional purposes, adopted at later dates, are also addressed in this chapter, two dealing with administrative and financial matters and three with CAA in the wider world. the hand: art education in the united states Starting with the Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of All Nations in London in 1851, the United States began to mobilize itself as a stronger force in the newly 2 The Beginnings “Art for higher education, and higher education for Artists” susan ball 20 ∏ Susan Ball industrialized world. The country chose to rapidly expand its vocational art education program in numerous ways, looking to England initially for models to train American vocational teachers. In 1872, Walter Smith, who had been the head of the South Kensington School of Industrial Drawing and Crafts at Leeds, was hired to be the first state director of art education in Massachusetts. Smith later went on to found the Massachusetts Normal Art School in 1873 to train drawing teachers.2 In 1881, the United States Bureau of Education noted the existence of thirty-seven such schools specializing in art and design, twelve of which had been established following the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Among these twelve schools, several were connected with colleges and art museums : the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Art School of Smith College, the School of Design at Vassar, and the Rhode Island School of Design.3 In 1883, the National Education Association, founded as early as 1857, organized a Department of Art, providing a forum for art and industrial art teachers at its national conventions.4 These developments demonstrated a more concerted effort on behalf of the United States to foster art and design education in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It should be noted that instruction in the manual arts and the cultural value of the arts had already been a stable part of American elementary school education . Since colonial times, the founders of the United States had supported the principle of elementary school education for everyone and free public schooling for the poor, which was rare in other industrialized countries.5 Because a broad educational system had already been in place in the United States, the establishment of stronger training in the arts was able to progress quickly and ef- ficiently in secondary schools and colleges in the late nineteenth century within the American school system. The importance of education in the industrial arts and attention to its aesthetic appeal would become increasingly important factors in the twentieth century. Despite the fact that the United States exhibited a staggering seven thousand items at the Paris Exposition of 1900—more than any other country— critics charged that the lack of aesthetic appeal of the Americans’ clever inventions led to a questioning of their quality. This criticism eventually convinced American industries that aesthetically appealing and well-designed manufactured objects were a matter of sound business in order to compete successfully in a world market.6 Establishing and developing the links between the fine arts, design, industry, and vocational education therefore became key factors in the early twentieth century.7 As more vocational and normal schools were established specifically to teach art and design, the growing body of teachers in this field formed regional associations . These associations focused at the outset on either drawing or manual The Beginnings ∏ 21 training and included not only elementary school teachers, but also secondary school and college-level teachers. The regional associations were all...