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So I get asked a lot about whether or not I think art school is worth it, and I always end up giving a kind of lukewarm answer like "it depends" or "if you can afford it maybe" but honestly, based on everything I know about these institutions.. my answer is no. It's not worth it.
The amount of money students are paying now to be verbally abused and traumatized by some of their teachers is approaching DOUBLE what I paid. I can't keep pretending like this is ok. It shouldn't be like this, obtaining an art education shouldn't be this inaccessible—
Pretty much every creative industry has deeply racist & classist roots and these institutions continue to contribute to that culture every year. I can't in good conscience recommend young artists, especially those who are Black or otherwise marginalized, subject themselves to it.
To be clear, I'm talking specifically about art schools in the United States—I can't speak to the experience in other countries, but through all of history, being able to pursue a career in the arts has largely been a path reserved only for the *most* privileged and wealthy,
and private art schools have only cemented that culture by raising their tuition costs to utterly absurd levels. The students who come from wealth can afford it, the ones who don't end up taking on massive debt—resulting in even more disadvantages + disparity post-graduation.
And the few Black and otherwise marginalized students who aren't dissuaded from applying and actually do end up taking out the $100k+ loans bc schools like SVA market themselves as the only path to fulfill their dreams... are then being failed every day at these institutions.
What is the makeup of faculty at these schools? Who gets to determine that? These places are fundamentally designed to cater to the students who have the *most* wealth and the *most* proximity to whiteness. And these schools have determined the makeup of most creative industries.
Any student who falls on the margins of those things has to navigate an environment engineered by Status Quo faculty and admin that can feel unfair at the best of times and outright hostile at the worst—only to graduate into a new one, where those teachers are now their peers.
I left NYC less than a year after graduating because I couldn't see myself succeeding in an industry that was rigged from the start. I've never submitted to American Illustration or SOI because why bother. These schools break people in ways that most don't ever recover from.
And ftr, now that I have somehow managed to have a career in illustration *despite* my time at SVA—I just have to ask, what "real world" scenario involves having your peers vote on and rank the value of your art? I've never experienced that in any professional environment.
So I'm not really sure what these kinds of cruel crit sessions are accomplishing. Professional artists need to be able to receive and accept feedback from their ADs/teams/supervisors and they need to be able to adjust their work accordingly. Where does the voting/ranking come in?
Maybe Twitter. This stupid bird app is actually the only "Real World" scenario where I could imagine this sort of "Tough Love" conditioning to be useful, because similarly to the Buzelli wall vote/rank crit session, posting your art on here may also subject you to abuse, lol
