The state of artwork historical past isn’t good, no less than not within the UK. In response to a faculties survey by the Affiliation for Artwork Historical past, solely 80 faculties supply an A-level in artwork historical past, down from 122 a decade in the past. Final 12 months the examination was taken by a grand whole of 838 pupils. It appears the children are simply not that into it anymore.
Searching for silver linings, the affiliation pointed to a “sizeable improve” in A-level entries in more moderen years. However this solely works for those who take 2019 because the baseline, when simply 483 pupils took the topic. Take a longer-term view and the decline is obvious: 20 years in the past, round 1,000 pupils took the A-level; 40 years in the past it was about 4,000. Then there’s the category divide. Three quarters of the colleges instructing artwork historical past are fee-paying.
The affiliation discovered a extra optimistic view of artwork historic curiosity within the college numbers. Enrolment in undergraduate programs is “steady”, at round 1,200 college students a 12 months. However, once more, they’ve chosen 2019 as a place to begin, after a decline of almost 30% within the 2010s. There isn’t a escaping it—artwork historical past within the UK is a dwindling, elite topic.
That’s the issue. What’s the trigger? Right here we usually blame a mix of cash and politics. Artwork historical past is seen as an costly topic, requiring specialist academics and dear supplies (thanks partially to the picture charges our “inclusive” museums wish to cost). Curriculum reforms over the previous 20 years have favoured STEM topics (science, know-how, engineering and maths). The final Conservative authorities tried to abolish the A-level altogether in 2016. Universities have confronted related pressures. The structural limitations for younger folks wanting to check artwork historical past are many.
However I’m afraid it’s additionally time to ask—are we instructing it proper? Is it thrilling and attention-grabbing sufficient? I’m not right here to criticise artwork historical past academics and lecturers; most do a formidable job in troublesome circumstances. I wish to query as an alternative our wider method to the topic.
First, we’ve been making an attempt for twenty years to promote artwork historical past as a way to an finish. “Visible literacy”, say the prospectuses, offers you the abilities for as we speak’s digital age. Actually? It might educate you how you can be literary about visible issues, however that’s completely different. I doubt younger folks really feel they need assistance navigating the web. If visible literacy had been the purpose, TikTok could be the syllabus.
Such an instrumental method reveals a rising insecurity within the topic itself. The most recent “benchmark doc” for artwork historical past from the High quality Assurance Company (QAA), the physique for educational requirements in UK greater training, does concede that artwork historical past is value learning in itself, however mainly as a result of it “reveals the selections that assemble dominant ideologies or resistance to hegemony on the intersections of sophistication, ethnicity, race, gender, well being and the setting”. In truth, the QAA isn’t even positive in regards to the phrases artwork and design anymore, for “they’re as we speak recognised as historic constructs rooted in European colonial growth”.
The proof means that politicising artwork historical past has not helped stem the decline in folks wanting to check it. We might imagine we’re making the artwork of the previous related by deciphering it by as we speak’s values. But when we more and more discover that previous distasteful—particularly the European previous—we threat spending as a lot time condemning it as understanding it. This won’t be one of the simplest ways to influence somebody to check the topic.
Maybe France exhibits a special means. There, artwork historical past is handled much less as an interpretative humanities self-discipline and extra as a historic topic grounded in objects, archives and technique, as a part of a wider, state-supported cultural infrastructure. In Britain, we now have tried to save lots of the topic by making it a helpful ethical instrument. However artwork historical past doesn’t must be helpful. It must be value understanding.
