ISALTA ASSAULT?

Some have interpreted the recent flurry of Blogs on ISALTA as a negative assault on the organization. This is simply a misunderstanding. The descriptions and critical comments of several posts reflect my enormous respect for the idea behind this organization, which at best is a very loose confederation of a large number of practicing artists, art critics, art teachers and professors throughout the world.

When I first heard of ISALTA from David Ecker in the 1980s, I regarded this as one of the greatest concepts taking a courageous and creative stance on the nurturance of living traditions of the arts in the 20th Century, an idea ahead of its time. ISALTA's mission was brilliantly crafted and became manifest in the doctoral research of artist practitioners/researchers for two decades at New York University. It was a perfect idea to find a presence on the World Wide Web which had not yet emerged as the versatile medium that it is today. However, as powerful as this idea is, it has operated almost invisibly as a force in the contemporary world of art.

To its credit, ISALTA, through the admirable efforts of Dr. Carleton Palmer, created a website which assembled the many distant and scattered projects and work of its membership into a website that finally provided a summation of thirty years of research and events that is extraordinarily impressive.

My disappointment stems from the fact that such an eloquent concept and dynamic pursuits have not attracted wider support and acknowledgment. I am also disappointed that the NYU School of Education (now named Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development) seems blithely aloof to the incredible work of so many of its alumni. It is especially disturbing that the art department in the School of Education marginalized art education, dropping its undergraduate program, and discontinuing its brilliant doctoral program that was interdisciplinary and phenomenologically oriented in favor of a terminal MFA program. The "political" choices that occurred after the retirement of David Ecker and later, Angiola Churchill, transformed the art department from its unique status in the world to one that looked like just about every other university art department, a somewhat respectable conservatory of studio art. It seems a travesty that the professors and leadership of the art department trivialized the work of its alumni and past professors, largely unaware of the incredible era of ideas that launched the concept of ISALTA and generated such a wealth of substantive inquiry.

My commentary has been directed at the need to find a way to establish the advancement of living traditions in art on an expanded scale, independent of institutions of higher education, forging ISALTA's own destiny while encouraging research by establishing awards for the best research in the arts, and providing a means for students at all institutions to become members of ISALTA while creating a forum for these new students. ISALTA might establish chapters at universities and continue to be a force for preservation and change in the arts for the 21st Century.

ISALTA and Navigating Global Cultures

ISALTA (International Society for Advancement of Living Traditions in Art) was born in the imagination and vision of David Ecker. Almost three decades ago this organization grew from a need to focus the research of serious artists who went to New York University from all over the world. In the past few years, the art department at NYU has become a more traditional studio art program and the ground-breaking research characterized by artists in that department dwindled to practically nothing at the turn of the century and is now full dormant. Although the program has become a respectable MFA venue for the terminal degree, the Ph.D. that brought innovative artists with a world vision no longer inhabit that art department.

A recent post by Wyzard challenges ISALTA to renew its vision, but it is not likely to emerge in the context of the new, sleek, streamlined Steinhardt which has replaced the the multi-headed School of Education, Health, Nursing, and Arts Professions at NYU. Instead, ISALTA needs to become its own institution through a more dynamic interactive web presence as suggested by Web Arts Collaborative. Perhaps members can work together to create opportunities for fundraising through mutual efforts in writing proposals for activities of their common cause. Such efforts might renew projects such as Navigating Global Cultures.

Navigating Global Cultures emerged as a web presence in the early days of WWW. It was born through the efforts of Sandro Dernini of Plexus, David Ecker of NYU Art, Carl Schmidt of NYU Humanities, and John Gilbert of NYU Music. It emerged from cross cultural and interdisciplinary initiatives in celebration of the 500th year of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America.

NGC was intent on linking children in different cultures throughout the world and succeeded in establishing projects in China, South America, Italy, Upstate New York and Harlem. It was ambitious and daring and worked under the primitive conditions of the early Internet, but it was creative, compassionate, and visionary.

NGC has disappeared in the ephemeral vagaries of the WWW, the graveyard of good ideas that went unsupported in the new political atmosphere that often characterized institutional WWW publishing as the web grew in popularity and authority. It is clear that such projects need adequate funding to be successful. NGC had no funding, but it had the commitment of imaginative students and faculty.