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.