Image courtesy of Schick Art Gallery
This June, after over a year of research and development, Skidmore released their Campus Master Plan, an assessment of current facilities and a guide to the next decade of campus development.
It’s ambitious and accessible, full of great ideas and long overdue admissions of substandard facilities. However, one thing that was conspicuously absent was any meaningful mention of Skidmore’s art department. All that it said on this topic was that, in 10+ years, there would be some sort of “condition focused renovation.” In speaking with other students, though, it’s been hard to ignore the general sentiment that changes in the art department are long overdue.
There is one quote in the Campus Master Plan that stands out as an especially important point.
“Students value open and unprogrammed places for interaction, connection, and belonging that foster and support student development and growth.”
This is perhaps the truest statement in the entire document, and while it’s tempting to go into how this directly relates to the epidemic of unhappiness and isolation on Skidmore’s campus, I want to specifically examine this quote in the context of Skidmore’s desiccated art community.
I chose Skidmore because of its stellar studio art program, and I’m not alone in that. I was excited about going to a school with a strong arts community, where I could make art and join a community of people who share my passions. But when I arrived, I found two issues.
The first thing that I found was that, despite choosing Skidmore for this purpose, I couldn’t access any arts facilities. Only when I did start taking art courses were the classrooms for the courses I was enrolled in made accessible to me. And even these resources didn’t support personal projects. So what I did, and what many other creative people are forced to do, was make art in my tiny little room.
And aside from the fact that Skidmore dorm rooms should not be used as art studios, with roommates and messes and overcrowding, there’s the obvious fact that this is an isolating environment for artists, one that precludes the interaction, connection, and belonging mentioned in both the the Master Plan and the stated mission of Skidmore.
This leads to the second thing that I found when I came to Skidmore, which is that there is little to no studio arts community. Compared to music or sports or theater, where upperclassmen and freshmen mingle and form friendships, the pursuit of art here at Skidmore can be incredibly isolated, especially if you haven’t gotten into Drawing I.
Obviously fiber arts is less of a team sport than lacrosse. Obviously sculpture critiques don’t draw people like plays do. But studio art being a largely solitary pursuit shouldn’t be an excuse to leave it be. It should be a reason to step up and counteract these deficits with meaningful action.
The way it is now, there are virtually no avenues for art students to connect and foster community outside of exclusive classes, two a.m. smoke breaks in front of the library, or the occasional club meeting where you can finger paint or make pipe cleaner art. This isn’t to malign the work of student-run arts organizations, because they’re doing the best with the resources they’ve been given, but building an arts community is an uphill battle when there i’s no infrastructure to anchor it.
There i’s no cross-pollination or collaboration between artistic mediums because studio art spaces are exclusive and segregated. In comparison, any student, regardless of their major or what classes they take, can use and congregate in the athletic facilities, but spaces for making art are a privilege reserved for those in classes. The closed and regimented art spaces are anathema to the “open and unprogrammed places” identified as important by the campus master plan. And despite our stellar faculty, students, and classes, creative thought can only go so far when the only art made here at Skidmore is within the boundaries of specific course assignments.
These two issues could theoretically be very easy to rectify.
There needs to be open studio space. It doesn’t need to be a gleaming new Idea Lab, and I’m not saying that oil paints or blowtorches should be provided freely. I’m just saying that the quality of community could be drastically improved by just a big room with some tables, easels, a sink, and a secondhand couch. A place where you can sit down with people and chat and take a break from long studio hours. It shouldn’t be that hard to achieve. There’s plenty of underutilized space in the art building, and the response I’ve gotten to this idea has been overwhelming. The art majors I’ve spoken to are highly enthusiastic about the idea. Students who enjoy art but don’t actively study it are excited. And the people I’ve spoken to who couldn’t care less about the arts have been consistently shocked at the lack of facilities currently provided.
Through all of these conversations there was an underpinning of urgency. The Campus Master Plan is full of good ideas, but the prevailing feeling from those I’ve spoken to has been that the changes will come only after we’ve graduated, and that, until then, nothing will be done to improve student life.
What I’m proposing may seem unnecessary given that Skidmore is now 100 years old and has never needed to address this issue before. But COVID completely decimated Skidmore’s campus life, and we can’t expect the community bonds of yesteryear to just magically rebuild after everyone who remembers it is gone. We have to actively help to rebuild it, and we can’t take for granted that talented and creative people will enroll in or remain at Skidmore.