In the middle of March, as patients stricken with the novel coronavirus began to flood New York City emergency rooms, Michael Rips, Executive Director of the Art Students League, got a call from a student who suggested that the League’s supply of protective equipment — gear used in welding and sculpture classes — could be a life-saver for the city’s doctors, nurses and first-responders.
Rips and his colleagues immediately decided to rent a van, load it with all the gloves, masks and face shields they could find at the League, and hand-deliver them to medical facilities across the city.
Executive Director of the Art Students League Michael Rips dropping off masks and gloves to Sinai, NYU Langone and SUNY Downstate hospital. Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Art Students League of New York.
“We met doctors at the side door of their hospitals,” said Rips. “Many of them wept when we delivered gloves and masks — and particularly the full-body Tyvek suits, which were incredibly difficult to come by — because they had been treating COVID-19 victims without any protection. We spent at least three or four days going throughout the city, delivering this equipment. It was quite a moving experience for us.”
The Art Students League has served New Yorkers in times of crisis for nearly 150 years. “Art expands your capacity to work through problems beyond what language allows,” explained Rips. “I don’t think it’s coincidental that the League was founded just after the Civil War. Our membership swelled in the aftermaths of World War I, World War II, and particularly during the Great Depression. People dealing with trauma — national or personal — have always come to the League.”
Like every other institution in New York City, the Art Students League has had to temporarily shut its doors. But even though its studios and galleries are empty, it is now offering a full roster of online classes. For a school that prizes the tactile experience and person-to-person interaction, this rapid shift to online learning has revealed challenges and opportunities.
“Getting instructors to begin teaching with technology they’ve never worked with before, that’s been very interesting,” said Genevieve Martin, Director of External Affairs. “These are tools that our community didn’t feel comfortable with when they had a choice, but now that there’s no choice, well, they’re actually quite open to it. So I’m happy. I feel like we’ve propelled ourselves into the future.”
Photo credit: The Art Students League
The Art Students League was formed in 1875 by a breakaway group of students from the National Academy of Design who were worried about the Academy’s financial stability and unhappy with its overly conservative attitude towards new trends in art. The League, as it came to be known, developed a model of arts education funded by memberships and open to all — regardless of economic class, race, gender or artistic point of view.
Almost 150 years later, that spirit of welcoming still defines the organization. “We have a blazingly diverse collection of people as participants in the creation of art, and that is truly inspiring. We have billionaires sitting next to taxi-cab drivers; people from Nigeria sitting next to people from Greenwich, Connecticut, who drive in every day. You don’t see that in other places in New York,” said Rips.
Photo Credit: Rudy Bravo for the Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League’s philosophy of learning also sets it apart from most other educational institutions. “Many schools primarily teach theory or critique, and how to talk about art,” said Martin. “We teach skills. We concentrate on the fundamentals so that you can cultivate your own agency as an artist, formulate your own ideas. We believe in creating a vocabulary or grammar around art, and that has to come from your hands and your eyes.”
“The League is completely non-transactional,” continued Martin. “If you come here and give us your time and willingness to learn, you will get a skill or you will see differently. No BFA [Bachelor of Fine Arts] or MFA [Master of Fine Arts] degree, no piece of paper. None of that — it’s a pure exchange of trust and ideas.”
This concentration on craft and the absence of a formal curriculum — a decidedly old-fashioned approach to education — has, paradoxically, put the Art Students League in a good position for this current crisis.
“For people who can only be at the League for a few hours a week, and consequently can’t develop their skills in the two, three, or four years of a graduate program, we give them the license to study for as long as they need. They can spend literally years developing a relationship with some of the greatest instructors in the country,” said Rips.
“This is why art students in higher education are so disgruntled right now,” explained Martin. “The unprecedented closure of institutions and not refunding the students completely undermines what MFA models put forth, that there are set qualifications needed for a fine arts degree. But evidently that’s not true, because students aren’t taking those classes and they’re not getting reimbursed, but they’re still getting the degree. That’s a problem.”
As it adapts to a new reality where that skills-focused training moves online, the challenge for the Art Students League is not to lose the community and intergenerational connections that emerge from the experience of creating art together with mentors and peers.
“Imagine being a kid from the middle of nowhere. You have no money, but you come to the Art Students League. You’re probably on scholarship and sweeping a studio broom so you get to go to class for free. You’re studying painting from an incredible instructor, and on the floor are still the drips of Jackson Pollock,” said Martin.
Students carry that passion for art and devotion to the League with them for their entire lives. Some even posthumously donate their bodies to the League so that their skeletons can be used for anatomical drawing classes. “When we say, ‘Donations are welcome here,’ we mean it,” said Martin. “And why not? Students are the ones who benefit.”
For as long as its historic building on West 57th street remains closed, the Art Students League will serve the arts community in new ways, with online classes from the home studios of its instructors and a video series on topics like how to organize a space and creative lighting for self-portraits.
“We’ve been taking advantage of the crisis to extend our programming beyond our walls,” said Martin. “But this moment only highlights the essence of what we do — the direct mentorship model, the smell of the turpentine, the sensuality of touch, the blank canvas, the jarring feeling of making something from nothing. You can’t ever replace that.”
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Published here on Forbes.com
May 4, 2020
