Colloquium I: The Art of Liberal Arts
Lawrence Weschler, director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, moderated the first of three colloquia, "The Art of Liberal Arts," with David Byrne, artist, musician, and lead singer of the Talking Heads; Thelma Golden, chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Sarah Vowell, author and National Public Radio commentator. They discussed the role of the arts in education-how the panelists' experiences in school and college furthered or hindered their aspiration-and their individual paths toward success.
David Byrne - A Student of the Arts and Sciences
"I had a very good art teacher in high school, an enabler, who didn't give assignments." David Byrne said, and went on to describe his fascination at the time with psychedelic painting. His teacher let the students pursue whatever medium they wanted, and as a result, Byrne said, "I was just totally engrossed." Byrne described his desire to study the sciences, humanities, and the fine arts, together in college, but he had to choose one subject, and so he decided to go to art school. He chose art school, he joked, because the graffiti in the hallway was more interesting than the graffiti in the halls in the science buildings.
Byrne said his interest in music began in high school in suburban Baltimore, when he used borrow albums of many genres from the public library. "There was a feeling at the time [in the world of popular music] that it was okay to delve in and try something out, to take risks." But his career as a singer didn't take root in school. "I was kicked out of the chorus," he admits. "Not for bad behavior, but for singing poorly." Like his art teacher, there were teachers whose approach to subjects outside of music would influence his career as a songwriter and performer years later. "I had a math teacher who used Alice in Wonderland to teach us symbolic logic," Byrne said, explaining that such instructional experiences were conceptually interesting and influenced him the most.
Thelma Golden Chooses Career at 14
Thelma Golden shared the pronouncement she made in the eighth grade that she was going to become a curator-and not just any curator, but the curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Golden gave credit for much of her success to a seventh-grade teacher who taught her art history and exposed her to the beauty of the arts. She said her teacher didn't present fine arts as fodder for a hobby, but as a world in which one could have a real career. "I was taught about the arts in a way that gave it a life beyond the assignments," she said. Golden was the curator at the Whitney before leading the Studio Museum.
Although her high school class studied art through a standard art history text and the encyclopedia, Golden said, "The difference was [her teacher] made it clear that books were not what it was all about." Golden described the trips her class took from Long Island into museums in New York City. "We would come into the city all dressed up and see these pictures from the books-the beauty of the experience of seeing the art on the walls. She made museums exciting places, places where I wanted to be, where I could work."
Today, Golden says, "High school students use my museum as a resource, and I am often saddened by the way the arts are reduced to an ancillary subject in schools." Golden said that her parents had tried to get her to pursue law or business. "My parents were not museum goers. I find my background is pretty typical for people in my line of work. I don't come from a long line of curators." Emphasizing the importance of exposing students to careers in the arts in she said, "Often, [the experience] comes from outside the home."
Sarah Vowell Gains Life Lessons from Failure
Sarah Vowell said she started out as a bookish kid in a small town in Oklahoma where there were no books. Though her parents hadn't gone to college, she and her sister were always interested in books and music, interests her parents didn't necessarily share, but appreciated. She explains, "They figured, our kids might be weird, but at least they're not boring."
(From left) Lawrence Weschler, David Byrne, Thelma Golden, Sarah Vowell
At 11, Vowell said, her family moved to a college town in Montana, where the public school had a very good music department. "I was this sad, lonely kid but there was this whole infrastructure to throw myself into. I joined the chorus, the band, and the head of the music department gave me trumpet lessons. Over the years, I had about 94 mentors. I attracted mentors like flies," she said.
Vowell says that despite her enthusiasm, she was ultimately doomed as a musician. "The great heartbreak of my life was quitting trumpet . . . there was so much learning that I learned enough to know that I wasn't good enough. But when you can see the people who are really great at something, really going somewhere, it made me want that for myself in some way."
A part-time job in college where she helped bring guest speakers to the campus, brought her in contact with the music critic Greil Marcus. "I had never met a writer," she explains. At the time, she was writing for a student publication. She wrote up an interview she'd done with Marcus and gave it to him. "He asked me for other things I'd written," she said. Vowell had also been writing art criticism for the student paper, and Marcus in turn passed her writing on to editors at Art Forum magazine. She was assigned a book review. "It was a big deal. My friends were so excited. One of them baked me a cake with the Art Forum logo on it."
"When kids ask me how did you get to where you are, I don't have a very interesting story to tell. I'm like a character from a Peter Sellers movie stumbling through my own life. All I can say," she added dryly, "is to be at the right place at the right time." Vowell went on to emphasize the importance of exposing students to practitioners, and she herself makes a good deal of visits to college campuses.
As she spoke about her work as a writer, the influence of her early interest in music was evident. She told the story of lying in bed as a kid listening to an album of Louis Armstrong playing in a Paris nightclub. "I thought if I just listened really hard, I could figure it out," to understand his talent. Now, when she's writing, she says, she revisits the lyrics of a certain song on that album: "We'll sip a little glass of wine; I'll gaze into your eyes divine; I'll feel the touch of your lips pressing on mine." As the song continues, she explains, Armstrong alters the language, changing, for example "your lips" to "your chops." She talked about pushing herself to use more vibrant, evocative language, and paraphrases this goal through her mantra of "less lips, more chops."
Weschler Cites School Influences
Lawrence Weschler cited two things from his formal education for helping him to become a writer. He said, "I grew up in California when it has the single greatest public school system." In school, he acquired what he called a delight in structure. "My teachers really made a difference. They made structure seem really cool." The second important thing he said his education provided him was "the capacity to be blown sideways, how a concept can come at you from the side and blow you open."
Parents Make a Difference Too
During a question and answer session, the panelists offered different perspectives on the role their parents played in their development as an artist. Sarah Vowell said that though her parents, a machinist and a hair dresser, didn't always get what she was doing, they were proud of her. "When my sister and I were kids, my parents went to about three classical music concerts a week." She described seeing her father's program once, and noticing that there were check marks next to each of the four movements of the pieces. At the time, she said, she believed her father loved going to her concerts, but as an adult realized that he had perhaps been suffering through them. "But that's what it's about," she said, referring to the check marks. "Suck it up. That's love."
