PROGRESS (OR PERISH)

While sincerity is the highest form of intellectual treachery, when it comes the ragtag denizens of the unregulated art world the unleveling impact of legitimate insight rarely goes unpunished. The sanctions inflicted upon the thoughtful and the discerning can be draconian or worse. 

 

Nobody likes a smartypants.

 

Aloïs Gerstedes had outlived his critics. As a young refugee fleeing the Nazis, Gerstedes arrived in the United States during an American golden age of ideas. At Columbia University his professors included Lionel Trilling, Meyer Schapiro and Doris Killhany.

 

As an outspoken progressive he was called to testify in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) where he steadfastly refused to cooperate. As a consequence Gerstedes found it nearly impossible to pursue his academic work and ended up teaching art history in a public high school in Queens. (Yes, they used to teach art history in public high schools!)

 

Mr. Gerstedes was my teacher. 

 

Having survived both Hitler and Senator Joseph McCarthy the New York State Department of Education's 1983 Pedagogy and Advanced Training Standards (PATS) were not about to defeat the brilliant and stubborn Gerstedes.

 

Imagine, after years of soaring lectures on Huzinga, Burckhardt, Berenson and Warbug, field trips to downtown Manhattan to visit the studios of some his artist friends (yes! I met Donald Judd!) and bringing into the classroom distinguished guest speakers like Clement Greenberg and Denny Albatos, Mr. Gerstedes was asked to adjust his curriculum in order to accommodate the (since discredited) "Pleager and Roth Cognitive and Analytical Skill Building Rubric." 

 

Suddenly Mr. Gerstedes was no longer allowed to refer to "The Waning of the Middle Ages" because it was deemed "overly assertive, biased and complex." Professionals visiting his classrooms had to be properly vetted and were only allowed to speak if they received PATS certified training. Art studios were no longer deemed as "appropriate" field trips since the educational value of contemporary art was considered questionable.

 

Mr. Gerstedes quit - or was fired, depending on the telling - and moved to his beloved Tuscany to retire among the tinted hills and scented vines. While he spent his final years writing and painting lovely scenic watercolors New York State rescinded PATS and replaced it with the national standards of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and now The Common Core. The public schools have gutted most of its arts programs and those that remain are mired in the bureaucratic jargon of the Industrial/Educational Complex.

 

But that's okay. Museum attendance is at record levels, especially among school children who are now encouraged to look at all manner of works of art and to talk thoughtfully about their feelings.