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The
Arts Amid Academe
Yale
is unique among Ivy League institutions in providing such comprehensive
professional training in the arts. At the AYA's most recent Assembly,
deans and delegates probed the powerful role of the muse in the
classroom, and beyond it.
February
1995
by Bruce Fellman
The money's
lousy, the benefits largely nonexistent. The
hours are long. And there's no security.
Still, they come. Would-be
artists, architects, musicians, and practitioners of all manner
of stagecraft continue to flock to Yale's professional schools for
some of the best training available anywhere. And on the undergraduate
level, the story is much the same. (See page 34.)
At the Association of
Yale Alumni's Assembly XLV, held October 20-22, some 225 alumni
delegates from around the country heard deans, administrators, museum
directors, and students discuss both the pleasures and perils of
a life in the arts. A veritable feast for the intellect and the
senses, the three-day event included lectures, performances, and
tours behind the scenes to the studios, recital spaces, and classrooms
where creativity is the basic prerequisite.
"Yale has a long
history of being at the forefront of promoting the arts," said
Elizabeth M. Mahon '84MArc, chair of Assembly XLV, as she convened
the meeting's first event, a freewheeling panel discussion with
Alison Richard, provost of the
University; Fred Koetter, dean of the School of Architecture; Music
School dean Ezra Laderman; David Pease, dean of the School of Art;
and Drama School dean Stan Wojewodski Jr.
In her introductory
remarks, Provost Richard sounded themes that would be explored in
detail throughout the Assembly. "These professional schools
are an integral part of the University and the wider community,"
she said. "And while they are already leaders, they are continuously
reinventing themselves."
One of the most noticeable
ways in which the schools are changing is their growing emphasis
on contact with the world beyond their own precincts. Since members
of the art, architecture, music, and drama faculties often teach
undergraduates as well as graduate students, the presence of the
schools already enhances the richness of the intellectual environment
at the College. But as part of the panel presentation, the deans
also described some of the efforts their schools have made in recent
years to link Yale with its host city. Primary among them are the
scores of plays, art exhibits, and concerts, many of which are free
and open to the public. Beyond them are areas in which Yale interacts
with New Haven in less predictable ways. "The edges that separate
the arts are dissolving," Koetter said, adding that walls between
the arts and other disciplines are coming down as well. He cited
as an example his own school's First-Year Building Project (Yale
Alumni Magazine, Summer 1994), which engages students in the
design and construction of low-cost housing in New Haven. Meanwhile,
graphic designers at the School of Art are developing an interactive
system at Yale-New Haven Hospital to enable patients to communicate
more easily with their doctors about health problems, while a group
of art students known as "Class Action" have put together
a series of billboards to change perceptions in New Haven about
AIDS. "Outreach is a fundamental part of the curriculum,"
noted Wojewodski, whose school has recently expanded its own outreach
efforts with a project to teach playwriting skills to local children.
Such
efforts come at a price, and hovering over the entire gathering
was the issue of how little money is available,
what Wojewodski described as the "troublesome news" about
the arts and those who pursue them professionally. "Theater
has the ability to save the world," he said. "But I'm
bothered by what happens to our students financially." He explained
that financial aid for the arts at Yale remains severely limited,
with the result that the average Yale Drama graduate, for example,
leaves the cozy confines of the school "distinguished and impoverished"
with a debt of $29,000, only to face a career that pays an average
of $14,000 a year. At the other schools, the numbers may be somewhat
different, but the story is similar. Music, no less than drama,
says Laderman, "is not an easy field to go into these days."
Still, the students
come, or want to, with dozens of hopefuls applying for each slot.
Last year, the Drama School received more than 1,100 applications
and accepted only 83 students; at the Art School, 790 applicants
vied for 54 openings.
During the Assembly's
Friday morning session, delegates had a chance to see what the successful
applicants get for their tuition, sitting in on master music classes,
theatrical rehearsals, and design studios, and talking to the students
as they went about their creative work. In one of the art studios,
delegates watched Anne McKeown, a second-year art student, carving
images in four-foot-by-six-foot sheets of plywood in preparation
for making prints. "I thought this project would take a couple
of months, but it just keeps expanding," said McKeown, who
hopes to teach after graduation in the spring. "This has been
an amazing experience."
After
leaving the works-in-progress, the delegates got an in-depth appreciation
of what the finished products can be at their best.
On Friday afternoon, Alexander Purves, a professor of architectural
design, delivered a lecture, "Examining Architecture: A Close
Look at Louis I. Kahn's Yale Museums," during which he "decoded"
the Yale Art Gallery, Kahn's first major commission, completed in
1953, and the British Art Center, the architect's last major design,
which was finished in 1977. "The buildings on Chapel Street
bracket an extraordinary career," said Purves, who took delegates
on a guided slide tour of the museums and highlighted Kahn's innovative
use of both interior and exterior space.
Following the talk,
undergraduate artistic prowess had its moment in the spotlight in
the form of performances by the Yale Glee Club; the Viola Question,
a comedy troupe; the Whiffenpoofs; and Whim 'n Rhythm, the Whiffs'
female counterpart. Alumni of the groups joined them onstage, and
for Allison Day '90, now a graduate student in medieval art history
at the University of North Carolina, the experience proved "more
than a little poignant. All the faces are new, but they're already
my friends," said Day. "It's a bond with past, present,
and future."
Ensuring the continuity
of that bond was the subject of an address by Duncan Robinson, director
of the Yale Center for British Art, following the traditional Friday
night banquet in Commons. "Can we really afford to neglect
the arts when they have so much potential, not just to challenge
us, but to change our society for the better?" asked Robinson.
He answered his own question: "Unequivocally, no!" But
he was quick to caution those who might embark on careers in the
arts with less than full dedication. "It takes courage to be
an artist if you take your vocation seriously," he said. "The
arts are not designed for comfort." 
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