On Campus News

New Degree to Address the Connection Between the Arts and Contemporary Social Issues

Beginning in the fall of 2012, School of Visual Arts (SVA) will offer a Master of Arts degree in Critical Theory and the Arts. The program brings together leading minds in philosophy, sociology and art criticism to examine critical theory in relation to contemporary culture and the arts. The program will be chaired by Dr. Robert Hullot-Kentor, a widely-published philosopher who has taught philosophy, literature and art theory at Boston University, Harvard University and Stanford University, as well as SVA. Students in the new one-year interdisciplinary graduate program will explore critical theory in conjunction with sociological, political and art historical texts, as they delve into the connections between current, pressing social issues and art practice.

"While artists of earlier generations once struggled to disguise the thinking labor that went into their work, today art theory has become part--often an explicit part--of all art-making. To an unprecedented degree, developments in art theory even directly transform art,” explains Hullot-Kentor.

The MA in Critical Theory and the Arts is an intensive 36-credit, three-semester program modeled on the approach of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. It is structured on a foundation of coursework in art theory, aesthetics, art history, social theory and social criticism, accompanied by two seminars -- the Proseminar and the Serious Times Lecture Series. For the program's inaugural year, the Proseminar will focus on the "Convergence of the Arts in the 21st Century" and the Serious Times Lecture Series will be dedicated to the topic, "Why doesn’t the United States make social progress?"

Robert Hullot-Kentor is a distinguished Adorno scholar, the translator of several of T. W. Adorno main works--including Aesthetic Theory and Philosophy of New Music. He is also the author of Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno (Columbia University Press, 2008); Ice Flow: Essay and Commentary on David Salle (Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, 2001); and Terra Infirma: The House that Mowry Baden Built (Open Space, 1998). He has been an external and resident scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard University and Boston University, and lectured at the Cooper Union and the University of California at Berkeley, among other institutions. Hullot-Kentor has taught in the BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department and the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department at SVA. Hullot-Kentor’s recent essay "Severe Clear," on the architectural plans for Ground Zero, was included in the exhibition catalog for "September 11," currently on view at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.

Joining Hullot-Kentor as members of the core program faculty are social philosopher and media studies scholar Devi Dumbadze; BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department Chair Tom Huhn; and writer and modern American poetry scholar Ellen Levy. In addition to the core faculty, Hullot-Kentor has assembled a group of scholars and artists to serve as visiting instructors in the program, including: artist Cory Arcangel, sculptor Mowry Baden, artist Paul Chan, social critic Frances Fox-Piven, historian Martin Jay,composer Stefan Litwin, art historian Molly Nesbit, scholar Spyros Papapetros, social critic Adolf Reed, curator Jay Sanders, artist Jessica Stockholder, philosopher Robert Paul-Wolff and essayist Eliot Weinberger, among many others. Hullot-Kentor has also gathered a group of graduate associates in a variety of academic backgrounds to work closely with the program participants during their study, including: social philosopher Jacob Blumenfeld; economist John Clegg; sociologist Jeremy Cohan; painter Nora Griffin; and musicologist Robert Wood.