The University of Toledo’s art department has been rife with controversy of late. The most recent round precipitated by an online petition wanting to save the drawing program from the axe of budget cutting. This has started a debate over whether the drawing program is being eliminated. Some have also questioned the use of the term “budget cut.” These are semantic tangents. Start with budget cutting: It’s clear that less money was spent on the drawing program in academic year 2009-10 than in 2008-09. Last year, there were part time instructors that were well suited to teaching the entry-level classes. The subjects in the advanced drawing classes were a variety of professional figure models.
Now, full time faculty members are pulled from their own disciplines and pressed into service to teach introductory drawing courses. With no professional models, figure drawing classes are forced to rely on work-study students being willing to pose undraped for minimum wage. (Many thanks to those who are willing, but they are few.) Whether these changes are due to the administration’s budget cuts or departmental re-direction of funds, the end result is the deterioration of the learning experience for all art students.
Verifying the claims of the drawing program being cut, poses a different problem entirely. The current trend in the department is away from “observational drawing” and toward “mark making.” For non-artists, this means that the accuracy of the line is not as important as how it was made. This is analogous to saying the solution to the equation is not as important as the letters one uses to represent the variables. Some might consider this approach as lessening the quality of the drawing education at UT.
There has been no hard information released on the new curriculum, but anyone can look online at the newly proposed courses. This combined with the lack of a full-time drawing instructor may suggest that the program is being cut or simply marginalized.
Art, like many other fields, is subject to fashion and popularity. One week it’s all about emotional content, the next it’s the process by which it was created. Drawings, whether executed by the hand of Prudhon, DaVinci or some nameless cave dweller, have stood the test of time. One can only hope that whatever takes its place in the foundation of the art department, the curriculum can last as long.
Tim Sanderson
UT Undergraduate
UT Department of Art, Painting
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