How to put the nation’s pupils off great art for ever

11 March 2009

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Olivia Cole eavesdrops on the dreary guidance given to comatose teenagers in the National Gallery. We have forgotten the true function of art

In spite of the grim gizmos, the galleries of the Tate Modern are full of teenagers — on their own, not just coerced on school trips. Interestingly, its consultation with 3,000 of them, the Manifesto for a Creative Britain, anticipated the criticism of teaching in the Cambridge Review, with participants lobbying for ‘more creativity in the classroom’ and changes to the curriculum ‘so that our subjects reflect our lives’.

As Charles Handy argued in The Hungry Spirit, the point of access to the arts, particularly when it is free, is ‘a taste of the sublime’ — something you can’t put a price on. Crackpot agreements (many of them hammered out to justify free admission) have museums pledged to connect creativity and entrepreneurship. The National Gallery is tenuously pledged to stimulate ‘the creative industries’, as ‘art collections provide an invaluable resource to a wide range of groups who then go on to generate business and investment opportunities for the nation as a whole’. It has a contractual undertaking to ‘promote prosperity’ — words that it has to be said ring particularly hollow at the moment.

The Olympics are already placing pressure on funding for arts and in the current climate this can only get worse. Details of spending by the most important of the national museums obtained by shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt shows that spending on acquisitions fell by more than £10 million in 2007/08. The landscape has altered. In 2007, those demon bankers Lehman Brothers supported arts organisations all over the world to the tune of $39 million. They were a principal sponsor of every major museum in London. As museums take stock, perhaps it’s time to re-establish that far from a kooky long-term market investment, or an extra outpost for the half-hearted application of Gradgrindian principles, it’s countering imaginative impoverishment that is their unique selling point.

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Amanda Craig

March 12th, 2009 10:16am Report this comment

Very good article. There is an exact equivalent to the teaching of English - a "how many swans were there at Coole" approach.
But the sad truth is that if these children aren't trotted round museums then they are unlikely to encounter great art at all. I took my children to the NG from the age of 3 (armed with Lucy Micklethwaite's A Child's First Book of Art.) They love it, and one is now doing History of Art A-level because it is NOT school. Education kills almost everything it touches unless imparted by an inspirational teacher. However, I'd still rather they saw Monet's Waterlilies than not.

William Dunn

March 12th, 2009 11:33am Report this comment

Two years ago, between meetings nearby, I made a quick visit to the National Gallery where I overheard similar inanities about Vermeer. Having studied many years ago under Lawrence Gowing, who knew something about Vermeer and wrote a wonderful book on the artist, I made a comment to a couple of students, who seemed interested. But their teacher accused me of molesting her students and called for two security guards who very pompously ordered me to leave the room because I was "disturbing" the public. A very sad day...

A. MacAulay

March 13th, 2009 7:27am Report this comment

Juno makes cellulitis or otherwise aesthetically challenged Goddesses feel bad about themselves.

JohnAnt

March 14th, 2009 1:31am Report this comment

"like luminous lemmings in small yellow cycling jackets"
Someone should send them down to the Tate and put them in for the Turner Prize.

Angela Stewart

March 15th, 2009 10:58pm Report this comment

In the National Gallery why not just tell children that they are about to see much beauty and extraordinary colour in the paintings and simply request that they should feel free to share their experiences after the excursion. I know I find a visit there always fills my eyes with beauty and inspiration - but I never I use an audio guide: you cannot listen and LOOK at the same time. Interpretation should follow appreciation not the other way around.

I have often observed school groups in the NG when I am visiting London and have pitied them the dry, "fact-based" talk about inessentials. What does a discussion about bridge-building practice have to tell us about the beauty both in execution and content of Monet's painting of the Japanese bridge at Giverny?

A. MacAulay

March 16th, 2009 9:48am Report this comment

Putting the "luminous lemmings" up for the Turner Prize is apt because this is the type of (post) modern art that so many (post) modern artists construct in order to "make people think".

That the purpose of art is to make people feel is lost on the dull witted, emotionally retarded knowledge administrators who teach and inform.

To wonder at Juno's beauty is to experience the same feeling as every human who has ever or will ever look upon this masterpiece.

Angela Stewart is right. Children (and adults) should be encouraged to open their hearts to great art. If they do that they will have found something to think about too.

Laura A. Macaluso

March 20th, 2009 3:49pm Report this comment

Good article and comments. There are so many ways to "use" art (for inspiration, to feel, for knowledge, for experience). What, for me, is the worst of all of this, is the fact that those of us who love art cannot do more to make "believers" out of those who do not yet know or understand the multiple layers/levels of power art can provide. I do not see, at least in the U.S.A. things getting any better for the arts. It just gets harder and harder. How can we convince those outside of our small "art circle" that art is worthy of our time, attention, energy and funding?

Judy Prince

May 30th, 2009 5:52pm Report this comment

Olivia Cole, what a marvelous essay you've written---profound, sweeping, rousing, convincingly-exampled, witty! You need to let us know the title of your book of essays. No matter the subject; it'd guaranteedly draw readers' inspiration.

My favourite-of-all phrasing--and I think the heart--in this piece: "Learning to find favourites, not just gathering a string of visually aided facts..."

Moreover, your comment-posters seem well-spoken, bright, reasonable, caring folk---oh my goodness, there's a right odd turn of events.

We USAmericans get all of the Official Museumfolk Boredom you describe so beautifully-painfully---and we get, as well, less money [than UKers] from our government for arts' support. Sad, that.

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