Of the MFA (Master Of Fine Arts):
‘Staffed by writer-professors preoccupied with their own work or their failure to produce any; freed from pedagogical urgency by the tenuousness of the link between fiction writing and employment; and populated by ever younger, often immediately postcollegiate students, MFA programs today serve less as hotbeds of fierce stylistic inculcation, or finishing schools for almost-ready writers (in the way of, say, Iowa in the ’70s), and more as an ingenious partial solution to an eminent American problem: how to extend our already protracted adolescence past 22 and toward 30, in order to cope with an oversupplied labor market.’
There are of course still storytellers, geniuses honing their craft that will hold up a mirror and lens for humanity within their creative imaginations. Maybe they can be found at MFA programs, but I’m guessing they’re more likely doing other things: getting crippled on a naval campaign, spending their days in an attic, learning to navigate the Mississippi by steamboat, or acting and writing for a theater troupe.
Addition: And as a reader points out: learning how to communicate during the current technological revolution.
How much good are all these museums, foundations, and institutions actually doing for the arts and humanities?
Related On This Site: From Poemshape Via Andrew Sullivan: ‘Let Poetry Die’…Here’s a suggestion to keep aesthetic and political judgements apart-Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment…English departments can’t just copy “(S)cience”…From Bloggingheads: Shakespeare and The Second Law Of Thermodynamics…Repost-How To Study Literature: M.H. Abrams In The Chronicle Of Higher Ed
Wednesday Poem: Wallace Stevens-Anecdote of The Jar…Wednesday Poem: A Postcard From The Volcano..-Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’
From The Arnoldian Project: ‘Architecture, Campus, And Learning To Become’
From NPR: Grants To The NEA To Stimulate The Economy?…From 2 Blowhards-We Need The Arts: A Sob Story
Arts and Foundations and Institutions-MOMA is private, so perhaps it’s not as decadent if they display Tilda Swinton in a box:
Tilda Swinton At MOMA-From Arma Virumque: ‘Nightmare In A Box’
…From The City Journal Via Arts And Letters Daily: Andre Glucksman On “The Postmodern Financial Crisis”
Roger Scruton says keep politics out of the arts, and political judgment apart from aesthetic judgment…this includes race studies/feminist departments/gay studies etc.: Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment