Friends of Art History Visual Culture Series

Friends of Art History Visual Culture Series

Categories: Lectures and Seminars | Intended for

Friday, October 14, 2016

2:30 PM - 4:30 PM | Add to calendar

412 St Patricks

1125 Colonel By Dr, Ottawa, ON

Contact Information

Nancy Duff, 520-2600 ext 2348, nancy.duff@carleton.ca

Registration

No registration required.

Cost

Free

About this Event

Host Organization: SSAC
More Information: Please click here for additional details.

“Art for the Millions”: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Book-of-the-Month Club”
Mitchell Frank, Associate Professor, Art History, SSAC, Carleton University

In 1948, the Metropolitan Museum of Art began collaborating with the Book-of-the-Month Club on a series of commercially successful mail-order ventures. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures and the Metropolitan Seminars in Art brought in huge returns to both institutions and were distributed to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. These projects raise important questions about middlebrow culture and art education in postwar America, questions we are still grappling with today in our recent crisis in the humanities and in the age of Mass Open Online Courses. What is the value of an education in the arts and humanities as compared to vocational training? How is art education delivered to a mass audience? Should accessibility, sometimes thought of as “dumbing down,” be a goal of art education, when many think that interpretation involves a type of engagement that is not rule-governed or prescriptive? This talk will explore the details behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures and the Metropolitan Seminars in Art and examine some of the tensions that arose between the Metropolitan, a guardian of high culture, and the Book-of-the-Month Club, a commercial enterprise that cultivated middlebrow taste.