deCordova scraps art classes for adults

For the first time in decades, adults looking for hands-on art instruction at the deCordova won’t see any offerings.

(This article originally appeared in the Lincoln Journal on September 7, 2012.)

By Alice Waugh

This fall, for the first time in decades, there will be no semester-based art classes at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. DeCordova has scrapped its school in favor of a greater focus on sculpture and family-based programs. The Lincoln Nursery School, which has rented one of the art-class studios for the past two years, is moving its entire operation into the vacated studios.

The museum school closure, which faculty members were told about last November, has engendered a feeling of loss in many students and longtime deCordova faculty members.

In 2010, the museum hired nonprofit consulting firm Cambridge Hill Partners to help draw up a new five-year strategic plan. In a letter to faculty dated Nov.17, 2011, former deCordova School Manager Kirsten Feldman wrote “the crux of [the plan] is to focus on deCordova’s unique asset — the Sculpture Park — by leading with sculpture in all of its planning and programming.” Over the coming year, the school would “transition to a less formal, more open model that allows greater access to art making and engages deCordova’s core audiences more directly with sculpture.”

“We’re focusing on being a museum and sculpture park,” said museum director Dennis Kois, who has been at the deCordova since 2008. “The school was always sort of a support activity.”

“Forging strong bonds with parents — particularly local parents — is critical to deCordova’s future governance and fundraising. Hence family and youth programs — including our summer youth programs—must continue to grow,” the museum’s Strategic Planning Core Committee noted in its October 2011 report.

Before it was revised, deCordova’s website noted its museum school “offers one of the largest non-degree-granting studio art programs in New England,” with classes in fiber arts and calligraphy, drawing, painting, watercolor, mixed media, digital photography, print-making, ceramics, jewelry and metal-smithing and sculpture.

Kois said biographical sketches for the 82 former faculty members listings would remain on the deCordova website.

At its peak, according to Kois, the museum school had about 4,000 different students each year, though by 2012, that number was down to about 1,000, he said. According to the October 2011 report, “the School program has declined as learning models have shifted and loses a significant annual sum.” Kois added the school lost about $100,000 in its last year of operation.

Michael Biales, a former drawing instructor at DeCordova, was surprised by that claim. “If the $100,000 loss is true, I fear it reflects poorly on Dennis Kois, since he had four years to improve the situation, and in those years, he raised millions of dollars for other projects,” he said.

Although the museum is now renting much of its former studio space to the Lincoln Nursery School (LNS), the venture “is absolutely not a money-maker” for the museum, Kois said. The move was “mission-specific” as part of the overall effort to emphasize “education and connection to families,” he said. “We would have done a preschool anyway… it’s not about the money at all.”

Having a preschool on the grounds of an established art museum and sculpture park in a natural setting is probably the only collaboration of its type in the country, and it’s a big plus for both the LNS and deCordova, said Kois and LNS director Nancy Fincke.

“We’re very excited about this opportunity,” Fincke said. “The intent is for the children to experience the sculpture park and museum as an everyday sense of place.” Fifty-nine children will occupy three former studio “pods” as well as space in the deCordova carriage house, she said.

In contrast to these new tenants, many of the deCordova students were in their 60s and 70s, Kois said.

“It’s a much older demographic” than that of deCordova visitors as a whole,” he said; “there was very little overlap.”

Some teachers dismayed 

Not using the deCordova studio space for hands-on teaching “seems a bit of a pity, I must say,” said former deCordova teacher Ati Gropius Johansen. “Those buildings were uniquely meant for artwork, and the whole thing was run in a tip-top way.” Johansen, a Wellfleet resident who began her career as a book illustrator and graphic designer, taught weekend courses on introduction to visual thinking and mixed media at deCordova for almost 30 years. She is the daughter of famed architect and Bauhaus co-founder Walter Gropius, a longtime Lincoln resident until his death in 1969.

There’s a role for teaching art even at an institution that focuses on sculpture and other exhibitions, Johansen added. People need a “basic visual education” to understand and appreciate art, and art-making classes allow them to “experience and learn something for themselves rather than just looking at someone else’s creation,” she said. “When you’re thinking about another artist’s creative process, she said, “you ask, ‘How was it done? What are the rules?’ You learn that from experience; you learn by doing.”

“As a teacher and artist, I value ‘old-fashioned’ art such as learning to draw, paint, and sculpt, and I thought these served an important purpose in helping people make art a part of their lives,” Biales said. “In terms of Dennis [Kois’s] aims for DeCordova, I don’t think a traditional-art, continuing-ed type program fit into the edgier image he wanted. It feels to me like the consultants ended up telling Dennis what they thought he wanted to hear. ”

Kois said he was “not surprised” that faculty members were upset. “I don’t blame them a bit. But the deCordova has to be sustainable in the long term,” he said.

Former students are taking art classes at places including the Concord Art Association and even Ryan Estate in Lincoln, which is renting classroom space to three former deCordova teachers.

“It’s such a loss to the community,” said former student Ronnie Friedland of Sudbury. “I absolutely loved going to the deCordova to make art. It was a magical place.”

“I think it’s terrible. I was pretty upset by it,” said Jim Lincoln, a Concord resident.

Painting teacher Elizabeth Ahern was more philosophical. “The mission has changed. Sculpture is hot,” she said. “I think Dennis is really trying to put this place on the map and bring it into the 21st century. You have to continue moving forward. That’s what life is all about.”

Biales said Kois is making a sincere effort to help former teachers secure new teaching positions and to help former students connect with new classes elsewhere.

“Despite the fact that DeCordova has not gone in the direction I would have chosen, I still wish Dennis the best of luck. DeCordova can continue to be an asset to Lincoln and surrounding areas if he succeeds in his ambitious goals,” Biales said.

Fall offerings

This fall, the deCordova is offering free family education programs. ARTfull Play, an hour-long program every other week, is for families with preschool-age children. ARTfull Explorations is for families with children age six and up that will feature “group explorations of the museum galleries and sculpture park installations and engagements with materials and processes inspired by the themes and artists of the day,” according to a written list provided by deputy director for learning and engagement Julie Bernson, who was hired earlier this year..

There will also be several fee-based workshops in ceramic sculpture for teens and adults taught by ceramics teacher and artist-in-residence Bruce Barry over a period of four to five weeks each.

“The programs are geared toward children, parents and grandparents, so everyone can participate together,” said Bernson.

“They’re also geared toward having experiences with art that don’t necessarily lead to a particular product being taken home,” Bernson said. “We’re not just teaching people specific things, but letting them interact with the museum and experience the exhibitions in all sorts of ways.”