From a recent NYTimes piece on the future of the Detroit Institute of Art, and an important reminder of the current state of art education.
“If the sales take place, the Detroit Institute will be the most prominent victim of the separation of daily existence and culture that so darkens American life. High culture, especially, is all too frequently viewed as a dispensable frivolity by far too many politicians. Witness the drastic cuts to art and music programs in public schools across the country. (Ms. Erickson said only about 3 percent of Michigan public schools still have such programs.)
“One reason such cuts are tolerated is America’s shortsighted separation of education and economics. If the United States aims to produce more and import less, it needs designers and inventors of things to be produced. Such skills require just the kind of imagination and ingenuity that are nourished by art training from an early age and by museums.”
Read the rest of the article here.