Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education

Institutional Time : a critique of studio art education by Judy Chicago.
In this characteristically tenacious book, feminist artist and educator Chicago, best known for her 1979 installation "The Dinner Party" (now permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum), shares her struggles and successes as an art instructor at CalArts (where she helped establish the feminist art program), Indiana University, Duke, Western Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and elsewhere and boldly calls for a systematic restructuring of studio art programs, which she finds "deficient, dishonest, and lacking in standards, " as well as androcentric. Women's enrollment surpasses men's, but they are especially disadvantaged and less likely to succeed because the "curriculum as it exists today is biased against women." Chicago holds up her pedagogical methods as potential models for reforms, particularly her emphasis on students locating personal content (when technique usually takes precedence), which helps women and students outside the cultural mainstream. Publishers Weekly (02/17/2014)

Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties

 Witness : Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties 
 Accompanying a highly anticipated exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, this thoughtful catalog of brilliantly wide-ranging aesthetics explores the complex relations between visual art and the fight for racial justice. Taking as its occasion the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the text moves away from rote historical narratives, instead opting to focus on the role of the photographer in shaping action and emergent discourses, of the influence of Ghana and Cuba on politics and aesthetics, and of the tensions of politics in Pop art. These thoughtful essays help guide what might otherwise be an overwhelming diversity of images, including a David Hammons body print, an iconic poster by Emory Douglas, Betye Saar assemblages, and Norman Rockwell paintings, among many others. The images themselves, brought into conversation with one another, are a valuable and resonant resource, allowing not only a deeper understanding of art from the 1960s, but of the ongoing historical reality of race in the United States. Publishers Weekly (02/24/2014)