Letter to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

I have been coming to the Nelson-Atkins since I was eight years old, that was the year the Egyptian gallery either opened or received a new object. I remember seeing the billboards announcing some pharaoh’s arrival. The museum’s free entry made it possible for my mother to take me and take me back again because I had been radicalized by the beauty of the Nelson, not only its stately architecture, but its purpose to display all the world’s beauty. The museum made possible a world I had never known to exist within my reach, one that was so much larger and more dynamic than the one I had been experiencing up until then. Eventually my experiences with the Nelson’s collection lead me across the country, over two seas and to many, many foreign cities, ending me up with a BFA in art history from Pratt Institute. 

I want to illustrate how important the Nelson-Atkins is to me to serve as the motivation for my letter, though its purpose is to voice my deep concern for the art classes that are offered to the public. 

I signed up for the continuous line class for July 30-August 1. The teacher, Linda, began class by asking everyone to share their name, experience and reason for taking the class. She explained that she wanted to ‘know where everyone was at with drawing’, but no teacher has the right to ask this question of experience, nor is there any need for it. A teacher’s job, as put by a wonderful past professor of mine, is “always to connect to each {student} and all as best you can (it's never perfect) and to care about them (teaching is a helping profession)”. This professor, nor any of my professors ever asked what my experience was. This sets people up for comparison, embarrassment, self-effacement, etc. Experience of drawing has very little to do with drawing when you are beginning to draw as 90% of the class was. The general answer to experience was that there was ‘a class long ago in high school’ or not since they were ‘very small', but nothing ever since. This depressing reality has also motivated me to write this letter. Education is a forsaken institute in this country so I don’t even know what word to use to describe the decay of arts education, so the importance of these drawing classes offered by the museum was very clear to me. 

After introductions, the teacher told the story of how William Rose became the artist on the cover of Strathmore 400 series paper. The teacher held up the 9x11 sketchbook and pointed at Rose’s drawing, saying something along the lines of ‘he didn’t start out drawing like this, he had to take classes just like these,’. It was a story that glorified the technically taught artist, that glorified representation in drawing and even went on to glorify Hollywood. The most radical point of the story was overlooked, which was that a seemingly ordinary man chose to pursue drawing out of the blue to such an extent to become “accomplished”. This story in its delivery upheld the aging hierarchy imposed on art by western ideals that establishes fine art from not, that in the case of William Rose establishes a successful artist from not. This hierarchy also asserts that there is this one way to learn how to draw, rooted in the ideas of the Renaissance. The path that Linda was evidently going to have us follow when she finished her story and put us to our first task of creating a five step scale. 

There is so little engagement of one’s autonomy within this method of learning, which is the very faculty that must be exercised for one to draw. To begin students practically brand new to drawing by asserting the ‘most important things in drawing’ are ‘form, contrast, and line', as our teacher did, is absurd as these words are mere abstractions to the students. Drawing begins with desire not technique. I imagine the class would’ve been better suited to exploring the galleries with the point to discover what desire motivated the artist to create such an image to begin to engage the students with their own desire to draw. 

To draw is to desire to communicate, often “expression” is used to define the act of art, but I find that art is about communicating that unique way that the artist feels that it means to exist. I find it a great disservice to orient students towards the idea of a final, perfect product, like the one on the cover of those Strathmore sketchbooks. This method dismisses what I believe to be the source or why of art: which is that it is an inherent to our nature to create. Evidenced by the art of the prehistoric caves like Chauvet and Lascaux that were created at a time in human history where we lived in a hut or tent having to avoid cave bears and the like. Life was not simple nor easy, but the need to communicate the experience of being was nearly if not as important as shelter made obvious by the intense beauty of the paintings and the thousands of years of use the caves experienced. 

Connecting the student with their inherent ability and desire to make an image on the page should be the center of a drawing class. To draw from one’s autonomy engages one with their sovereignty, the page becomes an extension of themselves and as they act on impulses to form the image upon the page the muscle of sovereignty is exercised. Which is that the most valuable faculty to an individual as their use of it decides their reality. All said in effort to show how important drawing and art classes are.  

My intention is not to completely dismiss technique nor the continuous line class, but to suggest that such a class isn’t suitable to the students I have discussed above. This class would be apt to take after several other drawing classes that get the students warmed up to the tools and paper, connected with the desire to draw and beginning to find the images they’d like to work to create. Instead of students being ushered in to have your name tag and a seat that is neatly set with pad and pencils where they sit quietly waiting to be directed to use these foreign tools, I would think handing the student their name tag and a drawing utensil with the instruction to start making marks or images on the large pieces of paper that cover the floor instead of tables and stools would be a far better ice breaker for greenies. The students would be engaged enough with the materials of drawing that they would be that more open to the content of the gallery tour for they have peeked inside the process of an artist. I imagine, too, the students could call on the teacher for advice as they freely lead themselves through drawing making for a student-teacher relationship that is without hierarchy, for the student guides the teacher.  

The Nelson-Atkins is more aware of its duty to its public, to bring art to its people, than most every other museum I have visited. Obvious in the addition being added to the museum and its continual free entry. But I believe it could be doing much more in the way of education. The survey this class provided me an image of an artless public that I believe is in desperate need of rectifying. And as the Nelson-Atkins is the center of art for a burgeoning metro, not to mention an institution of international recognition, it has an incredible opportunity to invest so much more in its public. For it is the public for which the museum functions, a function that is to preserve the ideas and objects of history so that the people may study and decide for themselves what it all means. I mean to express the gravity of art because I feel it is being severely overlooked, yet has the capacity to influence much change. 

From peace.