Fine Arts and Art History Department: What is to be done with Art Education?

The Fine Arts and Arts History (FAAH) department at AUB held a lecture entitled: "WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH ART EDUCATION?" by Shady El-Noshokaty (AUC, Cairo), Walid Sadek (AUB, Beirut), Christine Tohme (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut)

Moderator: Angela Harutyunyan (AUB, Beirut)

There has been a growing rupture between studio arts education in the context of fine arts academies and contemporary art production and representation since at least the early 1970s. This rupture has for the most part been situated within the polarizing debates between instruction in skills designated to the domain of the fine arts academy and conceptual practices that largely rely on the de-skilling of craftsmanship. In North America and the UK the crisis in art education was addressed by primarily designing art programs on "social practice", which as Gregory Shollette convincingly argues, has further polarized the rift between "social practitioners" who produce interventionist and participatory art and "object makers".

The panel discussion entitled "What is to be done with art education?" aims at expounding upon the future of art education, the politics of pedagogy as well as problems pertaining to the paradigm of instruction within studio art practice in Beirut, Cairo and Baghdad. In all of these locations, there seems to be a current within the contemporary art institutions that could be dubbed as the "educational turn": in most cases, from Cairo's Townhouse Gallery to Beirut's Ashkal Alwan, the institution incorporates not only the function of a facilitator of art production and representation, but also instruction and education. These initiatives are often a response to the inadequacy of studio art programs within formalized educational institutions, but they also reflect a larger paradigm shift towards discursive and instructive events within the international art world.

The questions to be addressed include; what is the relationship between the above-mentioned informal art educational initiatives and formalized fine arts education? What models of educational programs are being experimented with? What is the purpose of these programs within the specific contexts of Cairo, Baghdad and Beirut? How is it possible to teach art nowadays? Is it possible to reconcile instruction in skills with critical and conceptual approaches? Can we think of deskilling itself as a skill? What is the role of the instructor within a studio practice -- to convey information and knowledge or to motivate the students to conduct research into unexplored domains?