On the "new" PhD in Visual Arts

In the current issue of C magazine, which just came out this week, I got the opportunity to review James Elkins' new volume on the advent of the Visual Arts PhD in the magazine's inaugural book review section. Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art is a thorough overview of several perspectives - largely from artists who also work as critics or professors - on the relatively recent proliferation of PhD degrees being offered in the visual and studio arts (though, as one essayist, Judith Mottram, shows early in the book, doctoral degrees in studio art are not all that new in the UK, where programs were established as early as 1975 and more than 1,000 students are currently enrolled in doctoral or PhD programs).


While Elkins has previously been a staunch critic of the notion of university programs for curators and art critics, here he takes a more even-handed approach. As I wrote in the review:

Rather than engaging in a simplistic ‘for or against’ argument about the development of studio art PhDs, Elkins wisely sidesteps these questions of legitimacy in order to delve into what is at stake in the creation and proliferation of these degrees. As he writes in his introduction, “The question is not whether the new programs are coming, but how rigorously they will be conceptualized” (ix). Just as master of fine arts (MFA) degrees, which were introduced in the United States after World War II, initially provoked opposition from artists and academics but have since become ubiquitous, PhDs in studio art, Elkins argues, are on a similar trajectory towards acceptance and now, while they are still being implemented in Canada and the United States, is the time to question how they might best serve students and practitioners (vii).

This week, several art critics closer to home weighed in on graduate programs for artists, starting with The New York Times' Roberta Smith. In her profile of the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, a free art school run by an artist collective in New York, Smith writes that:

In this context the growing interest among art schools and universities (mostly abroad so far) in offering a Ph.D. in art makes the blood run cold. It also seems like rank, even cynical commercial opportunism. It’s too soon to tell, but I’d like to think that the economic downturn is doing serious damage to this trend and maybe even put budding artists off graduate school entirely.

Soon after, Toronto's Andrea Carson of View on Canadian Art echoed and endorsed Smith's observations, arguing instead that artists seeking the supportive environment that grad programs seem to offer should be able to find such a network in the contemporary art world, particularly through gallerists, curators and critics.

While I agree with Smith that there might be a degree of cynicism and exploitation involved in American PhD studio art programs, which often charge obscene tuition levels to students, the context in Canada is quite different. As Stephanie Vegh points out in her blog post on the topic, the two existing Canadian PhD programs in studio art - at York University and the University of Western Ontario - subsidize or fund their students to the point that tuition is effectively free. And, given that these and many other grad level programs in Canada fund their students throughout their education, unlike Smith's prediction that the recession would put people "off" graduate degrees, there has actually been a great influx in grad applications at Canadian universities this year as those without stable work have returned to school instead.

Though Elkins' book is mainly concerned with the pedagogical issues at stake in these visual arts PhD programs - How does one teach someone to be an artist at the PhD level? And what should a visual arts or studio dissertation look like? - I'm still interested in an issue that no one seems to be addressing: what are the social, economic and political conditions that these programs are responding to? As someone just starting my PhD in art history and visual culture at York (also a newer program where what constitutes "visual culture" has still not been decided), I have a vested interest in how these doctoral programs are structured. I also am in the unique position of working and teaching alongside the first doctoral degree in visual art students in Canada and seeing the application and admission processes.

At present, all of the PhD candidates at York, in both art history and visual arts, are women. That demographic tidbit alone raises all kinds of interesting questions about what motivates these PhD applications and why women are more likely to enroll in advanced degrees. What are men artists doing differently? Is it just that, socioeconomically, they continue to have greater advantages as professional artists? And what is happening in the contemporary art world so that this level of specialized education seems appealing and necessary to so many artists, art historians and critics? Is it a scarcity of jobs that makes university positions seem so appetizing? or is something more significant at play?

I don't have answers to any of these queries (though I do have opinions on a few of them), but I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on this and on following the discussion as it develops.