Visual Artists of Vermont College is a collective comprised of visual artists and visual art scholars dedicated to providing stewardship of the founding pedagogy of the MFA in Visual Art program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
The MFA in Visual Art program was founded in 1991 by G. Roy Levin and Jessica Lutz at Vermont College of Norwich University with the following basic concepts:
1. Art is not value-free, nor is art education. Both must be considered within the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts which necessarily define and condition the production and reception of art.
2. Just as the process is an essential part of the product in art making, how one teaches is what one teaches.
3. Self-actualization should be encouraged through a student – centered pedagogy where the students create their own individualized curriculum.
4. A student’s self-evaluation and Faculty evaluations of a student’s work should not be based on abstract Program generated criteria but on the student’s own experience and the creative process s/he has undertaken within the Program.
5. All subject matter of study and artistic inquiry should be approached from a multi-disciplinary view of knowledge and art practice.
6. The educational milieu should be as non-hierarchical as possible and serve as a model for other artistic communities for future activity.
G. Roy Levin – Art Education as Cultural Practice 1998.
These guiding principles form the bedrock of the pedagogy in the MFA-V program, which holds that each student is at the center of their own learning. Which is to say, the Program intentionally built a framework of graduate education that offered an alternative to the hegemonic systems of knowledge production found in all other MFA programs.
Currently, there is a great deal of concern that the administration of the newly formed Vermont College of Fine Arts embraces the founding pedagogy in name only. The recent dismissal of Jessica Lutz as Program Director has led many of us to question the administration's dedication to the student-centered pedagogy that G. Roy Levin created and that Jessica Lutz provided stewardship over.
As a result, members of the MFA-V community are welcome to use these pages as a resource for sharing information, debate, community building, and direct action towards achieving an investment in, and dedication to, the founding pedagogy by the administration of Vermont College of Fine Arts. This public space is being viewed by all members of our community, including the administration. Share what is important to you about MFA-V !
