Notes
[ noteS ] introduction: Portfolio Day 1. Daniel Grant, “High Schools of the Arts,” American Artist, February 2010, 74. See the Advanced Placement information on studio art at www.collegeboard .com/student/testing/ap/sub_studioart.html. 2. These are three of the fifteen institutional concerns of private art colleges listed in Bill Barrett’s “15 Concerns” (Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design, March 25, 2008). Four of the concerns focus on the U.S. economy, four on AICAD schools’ ability to compete with other educational options, four with government efforts to regulate higher education—and finally, one concern focuses on how art schools can grab attention in a busy, media-saturated society. 3. Private art colleges have a range of prices, but generally charge more for tuition than state universities or community colleges (with art departments that offer the same degrees in art). Among the top tier of art colleges—which includes MICA—the cost of a freshman year (tuition, room, and board) is on par with the top private liberal arts colleges and some Ivy League schools: around $45,000 a year in 2009. (This is typically broken out as a mid-$30,000 figure for tuition and $10,000 to 12,000 for room and board). The Web sites of forty-one private art colleges in North America listing their tuitions and statistics can be reached through the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design directory at www.aicad.org. As with all private colleges, MICA boasts that most students receive some financial aid. A similar pattern is seen at all expensive private schools: On one hand, a large percentage of the students pay the full amount, and on the other, schools offer merit or “need” scholarships to the rest. A typical merit scholarship at MICA covers 50 percent of tuition. Students whose parents can’t pay in cash take out federal loans; every college relies heavily on this federal money. (Taking that money has required virtually every American campus to hold a “Constitution Day” event, for which MICA featured the famous radical Angela Davis at its 2009 event, which was on the topic of the Constitution and women ’s rights; the next year it was gay marriage and the Constitution.) 4. The typical portfolio is a cardboard folder with ten to twenty samples of art works—either the “best” or most representative of the artist—presented for easy review, often with a simple document explaining the artist’s interests [ 296 ] Notes to Pages 3–6 and works. However, in the real world, portfolios can range from CDs to fancy aluminum cases. One standard description for a high school portfolio is given by the College Board in its Advance Placement review guidelines for Studio Art (see www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/sub_studioart.html). Foremost , the art handbooks say that the portfolio presentation depends on who it is being submitted to, and on the guidelines that organizations provide for what they want to see. Exemplary how-to books include Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber’s Art/Work: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career (New York: Free Press, 2009); Jackie Battenfield’s The Artist ’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2009); and Margaret Lazzari’s The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist, second ed. (Boston: Wadsworth, 2010). 5. I borrow this three-part history from Thierry de Duve, “When Form Has Become Attitude—and Beyond,” in The Artist and the Academy: Issues in Fine Art Education and the Wider Cultural Context, eds. Stephen Foster and Nicholas deVile (Southampton, UK: John Hansard Gallery, 1994), 23–40. As to art “attitude,” while its contemporary form blossomed in the 1960s, its true modern roots go back to the European bohemians, especially in Paris after the late 1800s, where the art attitude became robust and bizzare. See Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I (New York: Vintage, 1968). 6. Interview with Raymond Allen, August 23, 2009. 7. Maryland, like many states, has a rich history of accomplished and “highbrow ” native sons and daughters in the visual artist. However, Baltimore seems best known for its two lowbrow native sons, the filmmaker John Waters (locally called the “sultan of sleeze” for his repertoire of vulgar films and latter-day photo art), and the musician Frank Zappa, who pioneered gonzo rock music. Meanwhile, Rolling Stone magazine has...
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