VISUAL ARTS PHD 1

Running Head: THE AMERICAN VISUAL ARTS PHD

The American Visual Arts PhD:

A Response to James Elkins’ Artists with PhDs

Bruce M. Mackh, PhD.

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Abstract

There is growing interest in the emerging field of doctoral degrees for visual artists. James Elkins’ book

Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art (2009) examines many variables and

considerations related to doctoral study and artistic practice, focusing on international models of studio-

art doctoral programs and how these might be applied to emerging U.S. doctoral programs in visual art.

This article is a response to many of the conclusions drawn in Elkins’ book, questioning the status of

artists in the university, the validity of submitting works of art in place of a traditional written

dissertation, and the book’s omission of current U.S. visual arts doctoral programs.
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The American Visual Arts PhD:

A Response to James Elkins’ Artists with PhDs

Why does a visual artist need a PhD? For that matter, why would an artist need a college degree

at all? Certainly, there is no official certification necessary for making visual art, no test to pass, no board

of review. Works of art are not accepted or rejected by galleries or museums based on the artist’s

credentials, but on the quality of their work. However, artists1 actually tend to be better educated than the

average American worker, with twice as many artists holding a Bachelors degree than those in the general

labor force (Gaquin, 2008, p. 125, 126). The Census Bureau ranks artists within the larger category of

“professional and related workers”, a designation including doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists,

engineers, and health professionals. Artists comprise a larger part of the American work force than

medical doctors, agricultural workers, or those in the legal profession, yet they are consistently

stereotyped as being eccentric outsiders in society. As Dana Gloria, chairman of the National

Endowment for the Arts writes in the Chairman’s Preface to the NEA’s “Artists in the Workforce, 1990-

2005” report, common stereotypes and caricatures of artists contribute to their marginalization in society,

but it is time to realize that artists represent a significant and valuable part of American life, not just

culturally, but in economic terms as well (Gaquin, 2008, p. 5).

Moving Towards the PhD

The evidence shows that artists are highly educated professionals and a significant force in the

American economy, yet a mention of PhD degrees for visual artists opens a virtual Pandora’s box of

controversy: since the days of the ancient Greeks, visual artists have been classified with manual laborers,

an attitude that continued throughout the Middle Ages and exists in the university to this day (Carroll,

2009).

1
The census category “artist” includes all types of visual and performing artists, and of these, fine
artists—craft artists, painters, sculptors, illustrators, multi-media artists, photographers, animators and art
directors—account for 18 percent of the total, equivalent to those in the performing arts (Gaquin, p. 12,
13).
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Until recently, the only way for visual artists to earn a doctorate was to set aside their art practice,

at least temporarily, and enter the field of art history, art education, or the relatively new area of visual

studies. Practice-based study was limited to the MFA, which has been considered for several decades to

be the “terminal degree”, equivalent to a PhD in other fields. There is significant opposition to the PhD in

studio-art from current art professors holding MFA degrees, who remain adamant that the higher

qualification irrelevant and unnecessary; nevertheless, PhD-level faculty in other university departments

have historically looked down on their colleagues in the arts as being their intellectual inferiors due to

their lack of this credential and also due to the pervasive notion that artists are makers, not thinkers, an

attitude that continues to prevail throughout higher education.

Establishing a PhD degree for visual artists would raise the status of art faculty in the university,

but exactly how this should be accomplished and what these programs should look like is the source of

much debate. There is no consensus even about the wording to designate this area of study: the most

common descriptor, “studio-art”, implies (not necessarily accurately, however) that students are primarily

occupied in the making of art, with a lesser focus on traditionally scholarly activities such as coursework,

research, or writing—a situation much like MFA study. “Art practice”, on the other hand, might include

either direct participation in the making of art or scholarly study about the making of art. The term

“visual art” is somewhat vague and rather broad, but it has the advantage of covering many different

configurations of study. Whatever the term used, this discussion centers on the relatively new notion of

doctoral degrees for those who are makers of art, not those who merely study art or artists from a

distance.

James Elkins, a prolific writer on the topic of visual arts and art education and professor at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, explores these issues in his newest book Artists with PhDs: On the

New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art (2009). In it, Elkins has compiled eleven essays by various writers
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and also includes excerpts from eight studio-arts2 dissertations. Elkins’ book examines, as he says, the

“frightening new possibility…that before too long, employers will be looking for artists with PhDs rather

than Masters or college degrees” (p. vii). Even though attention to the new degree is growing, there are

still few opportunities to earn any kind of visual arts PhD in America: as of the fall of 2008, there were

just five visual arts PhD programs in existence, namely at Ohio University, Texas Tech University,

University of California at San Diego, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the Institute of Doctoral

Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA), located in Maine; however, according to Dr. Elkins, by 2012 there

are expected to be 127 programs in the U.S. and Canada, and the list continues to expand (p. viii).

Artists with PhDs

Since the early 20th century, earning a PhD in many academic fields has been fairly standardized,

involving 1) advanced graduate-level coursework, 2) substantial independent research, 3) a written

dissertation reporting the results of the research, which must contribute new knowledge to a field of

inquiry (60,000 words, more or less, depending on departmental or institutional requirements), and 4) an

oral examination or defense of the dissertation. In U.K. visual arts doctoral programs, however, the end

product of a PhD candidate’s research may be a work of art instead of, or in addition to, a written

dissertation. Many of the essays in Artists with PhDs focus especially on the meaning and usage of the

terms “research” and “new knowledge” and how these may or may not be applied to the process of

creating a work of art (research) and the resulting work of art itself (new knowledge), and how this

dictates the end-product of a student’s efforts—written text, artwork, or a combination of the two.

Studio-art PhD programs have been prevalent in Europe for the past ten years or more, but as these essays

demonstrate, they are fraught with complications that are not necessarily applicable to the American

system of higher education. With the exception of one article by IDSVA founder George Smith, Elkins

dismisses the programs in which American artists are currently engaged in visual arts PhD studies,

stating, “in my experience they do not command much attention or turn out high on the lists of desirable

2
Elkins states that he prefers the term “PhD in studio-art” but that this can include “practice-based
doctorate” and a number of other variations such as “creative arts doctorate” and “doctorate in fine arts”
(p. xvi). Elkin’s term of choice is used when referring to this book.
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programs. I have heard it said that they are just extensions of the MFA—two or three more years in the

studio to no clear purpose,” (p.viii); neither does he examine the important differences between existing

American programs and their European counterparts.

The PhD in visual art as it exists in the United Kingdom is bound by institutional requirements

that do not exist in American higher education, namely the Research Assessment Exercise, or RAE, a

bureaucratic entanglement of meetings, reports, and recommendations required for the allocation of funds

to university departments. Under this system, funding is partially determined by the number of advanced

research candidates that can be claimed by each university department; hence, PhD students in studio-art

bring necessary revenue into the school of art. Justifying these students’ course of study and the end-

products of their research is therefore beneficial to their departments, and a wealth of literature

surrounding various configurations of research, knowledge, writing, and artistic production occupies this

discussion. In Artists with PhDs, the majority of the eleven essays focus on practices in the European

university. A brief summary of each chapter follows.

Judith Mottram (Chapter 1, “Researching Research in Art and Design”) documents research

topics of British art PhD students from 1976 to 2005 by category of research concentration, proposing

that information gathered through the areas of interest portrayed by candidates’ subject choices sheds

light on the shifting landscape of contemporary art.

Timothy Emlyn Jones’ first essay (Chapter 2, “Research Degrees in Art and Design”) is taken

from his remarks to an American audience of art administrators and faculty, explaining the development

of the U.K art PhD and the rationale for considering art practice as a legitimate research outcome. Jones

gives the example of the Glasgow School of Art’s three categories of doctoral research: a traditional

written dissertation, a combination of dissertation and portfolio of artwork, or a larger body of artwork

with written commentary. This author’s second contribution (Chapter 6, “The Studio Art Doctorate in

America”), is written as advice to American art schools thinking of starting PhD programs, in which

Jones lists ten considerations drawing from the lessons of U.K. programs and highlighting their

differences from the U.S. system.

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Henk Slager (Chapter 3, “Art and Method”) discusses the differences between scientific research

(goal oriented) and artistic research (self-reflective, process oriented) offering several arguments from

philosophers such as Lyotard, Merleau-Ponty, and Kant supporting the idea that a work of visual art may

be a legitimate outcome of research.

Mick Wilson (Chapter 4, “Four Theses Attempting to Revise the Terms of a Debate”) traces the

history of the research university and its relationship to current institutions, stating that the PhD is a

construct that has historically been applied in various ways. The arts PhD provides an opportunity and

demand for universities to engage in critical self-analysis of existing pedagogical methodology.

Victor Burgin (Chapter 5, “Thoughts on ‘Research’ Degrees in Visual Arts Departments”) states

that scientific and scholarly investigations are not the same thing. Like Jones, Burgin suggests three

levels of doctorate in visual art: a PhD with history and theory emphasis culminating in a dissertation

comparable to that of a Humanities scholar, a PhD with practice emphasis that would result in a half-

length dissertation and substantial body of practical work, and a Doctor of Fine Arts (DFA), which would

be similar to an extended MFA, with emphasis on the practical work and a textual accompaniment of

short essays, notes, and bibliographies.

George Smith (Chapter 7, “The Non-Studio PhD for Visual Artists”) presents compelling reasons

why artists should be recognized for their intellectual accomplishments and why this has historically not

been the case in universities. He also outlines the program of study at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in

the Visual Arts (IDSVA).

Hilde Van Gelder and Jan Baetens (Chapter 8, “The Future of the Doctorate in the Arts”)

maintain that art and science have more in common than is generally admitted, either by scientists or

artists, citing the history of the university and the historical, but artificial, split between art and science.

They support a PhD in which creative process must be documented in detail for a process-based research

project ending in a work of art with a written component of about half the length of a traditional

dissertation.
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James Elkins (Chapter 9, “On Beyond Research and New Knowledge”) presents a lengthy

discussion about how the terms “research” and “new knowledge” may be applied to works of visual art.

Elkins also discusses three dissertation possibilities similar to those proposed by Jones, Burgin, and others

(Chapter 11, “Three Configurations of Studio-Art PhDs”): written dissertation only, artwork and a shorter

dissertation, or artwork alone.

Charles Harrison (Chapter 10, “When Management Speaks…”) argues that the negative effects of

the RAE hamper research and art, turning both into a bureaucratic nightmare.

The second part of Elkins’ book, Chapters 13 through 19, presents excerpts from various

dissertations as examples of the kind of scholarship undertaken by studio-arts PhD students. Five of these

are from Australian programs and three are from art schools in London. The quality of these offerings

varies. Several are notably self-reflective, while others take a more traditionally scholarly tone.

Finally, in Chapter 20 (“Brief Conclusions”) Dr. Elkins begins by stating, “If you have read the

eleven essays in Part One, and sampled the eight excerpts in Part Two, they you have a fairly accurate

picture of the state of the studio-art PhD” (p. 277). This is not strictly true. Reading this book may

present a fairly accurate picture of the PhD in the U.K and Australia, but it does not accurately reflect the

majority of American programs already in existence. Dr. Elkins also lists a number of reasons why

detractors of the studio-art PhD think it is a “bad idea”, all of which merit further discussion: it will keep

young artists in school far longer, making it more difficult to develop their artistic voices; no advanced

degree is necessary to the making of art, and art made in academic programs is frequently of poor quality

due to institutional expectations and over-intellectualization; few MFA students are capable of serious

research or writing lengthy dissertations; many U.K. programs are nothing more than an extended MFA

to no real purpose and following this example will result in equally insufficient American doctoral studio-

art programs. Elkins concludes this list by saying, “These are all legitimate objections. There is no real

defense against them” (p. 277), going on to explain that the PhD will become prevalent in America

regardless of whatever criticisms might be raised, and it will eventually become the qualification

necessary for teaching art at the university level.

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Finally, Elkins offers two considerations: 1) the emergence of the studio-art PhD offers an

important opportunity to rethink education, learning from the mistakes of the U.K. programs and

reexamining the idea of the MFA, and 2) the studio-art PhD presents an opportunity for artists to achieve

unprecedented levels of scholarship, mastering a body of knowledge at a level far beyond the MFA;

however, Elkins argues that for the vast majority of artists this is not only unnecessary but may possibly

be detrimental to their art practice.

Each of these criticisms and comments deserves to be addressed, because there are answers to be

found. The PhD for artists is not just on the horizon: it arrived in Ohio and Texas well over thirty years

ago, but only now is it beginning to be recognized as a legitimate aspect of higher art education.

Questioning the MFA

Discussions of a PhD for artists (hereafter referred to by the more inclusive phrase “PhD in visual

art” instead of Elkin’s preferred term “studio-art PhD”) are rooted in understandings of the MFA—the so-

called “terminal degree” for American studio artists. The version of the U.K. art-practice PhD in which

students produce a work of art in place of a written dissertation, as discussed by several of the authors in

Elkins’ book, is quite similar to the current American MFA, in which it is the norm for a student to

produce a significant body of artwork for a final exhibition accompanied by a thesis—sometimes little

more than an elaborate artist’s statement. Students in European PhD programs spend the bulk of their

time in seminars and in the studio, as do American MFA students. The justification of the American

MFA as the “terminal degree”, equivalent to a PhD in other fields, is based at least in part on these

similarities, but Jones (in Elkins, p. 82) writes that American art schools considering undertaking PhD

degrees must:

Question the idea of a “terminal degree”, which is unknown outside the US. Employment should
normally go to the candidate best qualified overall for a position, not just to the person with the
certificate. I understand the idea of a terminal illness, but not a terminal degree. It is worth
asking whether it contributes any vitality to the education world.

Questioning the idea of the MFA begins with the title itself. The word “master”, an essential

component of “Master of Fine Arts”, has its roots deep in the guild system of the Middle Ages, indicating
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an individual’s completion of a work that exemplified mastery over a craft—a masterwork—conferring

the title of “master” upon the craftsman. An MFA is confirmation that an artist has mastered his or her

artistic practice and is competent to teach this practice to others, just as the title of “master” qualified

craftsmen to take on apprentices under the guild system. Similarly, medieval university students attained

the status of “master” when they had achieved a level of competence in an area of study sufficient to

teach it. Centuries ago, “master”, “doctor”, and “professor” were synonymous terms denoting a person of

scholarly accomplishment who had earned the qualification to teach (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911), but

by the early 20th century, these terms were no longer synonyms, and the word “doctor” had come to

indicate someone who had achieved an even higher level of study than that of a “master”. In the March

1959 issue of The Journal of Higher Education, Henry E. Bent traced the lineage of the doctorate, citing

scholars such as David Magie, Princeton University, 1901: “its possessor is able to do original work in at

least one great field of study, and to supervise and criticize the work of others” and Charles B. Libman,

1943, who said that the holders of PhDs should “understand a subject as fully as its development may

permit, to learn more about it through their own research, and to teach it with enthusiasm and

effectiveness to others” (Bent, 1959, p. 142, 143). As Jones (2006) explains,

Conventionally, a Masters represents new perceptions of the current state of knowledge in the
subject while a Doctorate represents new knowledge or significant contributions to understanding
in the subject: not the same at all. (in Elkins, 2009, pg. 81)

Although the MFA is generally accepted as the qualification to teach in a studio art program, just

as a PhD is required by many other departments, there are significant differences between the course of

study leading to an MFA and that of doctoral candidates. Both an MFA and a doctorate typically require

60 credit hours for completion, but the bulk of hours in an MFA are occupied by studio credits—up to 42

(70%) of the 60 hours required (CCA website), whereas doctoral students typically spend the bulk of their

credit hours (45 or more/75%) in coursework, leaving the remainder for development of the dissertation

(FADP website). These differences continue on into graduates’ professional careers: as university

professors, art faculty are typically judged on their exhibition record as evidence of their continuing art

practice, but in other departments professors are expected to continue their research activities, publishing
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regularly. This inequality is felt most keenly within university art departments themselves, where the

schism between studio artists (MFAs) and art historians (PhDs) often becomes acute. As George Smith

writes in “The Non-Studio PhD for Visual Artists”, professors of art are usually restricted to the studio,

teaching the “labor” of art but not questions of philosophy or theory in contemporary art. Art students

“learn to make art from artists but they learn about what art means from scholars who generally do not

make art” (in Elkins, 2009, p. 90), exemplifying the dramatic divide between theory and practice. Non-

art majors learn about art from courses in art history, usually in fulfillment of a liberal arts requirement,

absorbing the point of view of art historians, not artists. This furthers the prevalent view of art as manual

labor instead of an intellectual activity, because “…the art historian’s essential story…tells American

students that the artist works and the historian thinks” (in Elkins, 2009, p. 91). Smith founded the

Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) in opposition to this entrenched belief, seeking

to promote the idea of the artist-scholar or artist-philosopher. Unlike students in European art PhD

programs, the students at IDSVA do not create art as part of their studies, but the program is designed to

be a “mix of theory and practice, education and experience” (p. 93).

American Doctoral Programs in the Arts

Smith’s outline of the IDSVA program is the only example of an American visual arts doctoral

program included in Elkins’ book. This is unfortunate, both because IDSVA is still quite new, not having

achieved Title IV status nor producing any graduates to date, and also because it is not representative of

other American doctoral programs currently in existence. Despite the aspersions Elkins casts upon them,

these programs do not offer European-style doctoral study, although VCU and UCSD provide students

with the option of making works of art in addition to a written dissertation; all require comparable levels

of scholarship to other departments in the liberal arts and sciences, with extensive coursework in theory

and philosophy and rigorous requirements for research-based dissertations.3 Nearly all of these programs

are multidisciplinary: UCSD offers a PhD in History, Theory and Criticism of Art, with a concentration in

Art Practice (UCSD Visual Art website); Ohio University and Texas Tech each have interdisciplinary arts

3
Full web addresses for each of these programs are located in the Works Cited at the end of this article.
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PhDs, educating “scholars who are grounded in a single discipline and able to view that area through the

lens of the other arts” (Ohio University website), and who “obtain a foundational core of knowledge from

multidisciplinary courses in Art, Music, Theatre, and Philosophy and then specialize in a specific area of

visual or performing arts” (Texas Tech FADP website); and the PhD at Virginia Commonwealth in

Media, Art, and Text, overseen by the department of English, is yet another multidisciplinary course of

study, in which students must demonstrate competence in digital media, art, and writing (Virginia

Commonwealth, MATX website).

Elkins notes that IDSVA may be the first program made with awareness of developments in the

UK and elsewhere, although VCU began its program the year before, in 2006; however, Texas Tech

began its Fine Arts Doctoral Program in 1972, when the first European programs were also newly

founded, and Ohio University’s interdisciplinary arts PhD has been in operation since the late 1960s.

UCSD began offering the concentration in Art Practice in the fall of 2009, but its PhD in Art History,

Theory, and Criticism began in 2002. These schools maintain lists of alumni with stellar professional

accomplishments, serving as faculty and administrators across the country, as well as successful careers

as working artists. The implication that any of these programs were or are unaware of developments in

European higher education is unfounded, unsubstantiated, and potentially offensive to the many dedicated

educators teaching in and administering these programs. Moreover, Elkins’ assertion that these programs

“do not command much attention or turn out high on the lists of desirable programs. I have heard it said

that they are just extensions of the MFA—two or three more years in the studio to no clear purpose,”

(p.viii) is clearly based on opinion or hearsay, not facts. All of these programs require much more

demanding levels of scholarly accomplishment than an MFA and by no stretch of the imagination could

any of these programs be judged as anything other than equal in academic rigor to any other department at

their respective universities.

Educating Artists

The criticism that the PhD in visual art will require young artists to complete even more years of

schooling and possibly harm their ability to create art is also unfounded. Not all artists, nor all similar
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professionals—teachers, scientists or engineers, for instance—need a PhD unless they wish to teach at the

university level or conduct high-level research. Only one percent of American workers hold a PhD, EdD,

or similar degree, and just two percent hold a professional degree such as an MD, JD, or DVM. It is

highly likely that a similarly small percent of artists will choose to pursue this qualification, and for the

same reasons as other professionals in education, science, and the humanities. Schools of art provide

artists with valuable opportunities to delve more deeply into their chosen field, to learn the history,

theory, and philosophy behind the making of art, and to understand art in a wider context than the inside

of their own studios, as well as developing their own artistic practice. But unlike other professional level

careers, to be a working artist no official degree is necessary and about half of the artists in the NEA’s

“Artists in the Workforce” report did not finish college (Gaquin, p. 124, 125). There is virtually no limit

to the number of highly successful artists who had no university training whatsoever, just as there are

multitudes of musicians and theatre professionals who have not earned college degrees: natural talent is

sometimes all that is necessary to become a successful artist, no matter what the medium. Slightly less

than 40% of artists hold a Bachelors degree and only 10% earn an advanced degree such as an MFA.

Even after the studio-art PhD becomes more prevalent, it is sheer exaggeration to imply that a PhD will

become necessary for the majority of those who want to become artists. It may certainly become the

preferred qualification for teaching at the university level, just as it is in other university departments, but

an art professor with a PhD will likely be teaching courses in theory or philosophy, while instructors with

MFAs will continue to teach courses in studio-art practice. The addition of PhD-qualified faculty to

studio-art departments will put the teaching of the “intellectual” aspects of art—history, theory, criticism,

and philosophy—into the hands of artist-scholars and artist-philosophers instead farming these subjects

out to the “thinkers” in other departments: an art history course for studio-art majors that was taught by an

artist-scholar rather than an art historian, presenting the history of art from an artist’s point of view, would

be a refreshing change.

Dr. Elkins raises concerns about the ways in which further education might adversely affect an

artist’s practice, but this is worthy of serious questioning. “Theory should support, not distort, an artist’s
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practice. As a writer primarily writes, so an artist should primarily make art. These are both theoried

practices” (Morgan, 2001). Elkins’ contention (pp. 279, 280) that additional study may be harmful to

some students’ art practice could be seen as evidence of a strange prejudice lurking behind the surface of

this book—the attitude of PhDs such as some art historians (in which Dr. Elkins holds his own doctorate)

that only scholars such as themselves are thinkers, while artists are merely makers. Too much thinking,

Elkins seems to indicate, can hurt the artist’s ability to make art:

I would say it is generally supposed that knowledge of art history is in itself not a bad thing: but
for a working artist, it may also be that too much art historical knowledge might hamper or even
ruin ongoing art projects. (p. 148)

If your art is, say, Neoexpressionist, then an advanced degree may actually harm your practice by
making you aware of historical and critical reasons to doubt your own interests. (I have
sometimes advised artists who do expressionist work to drop out of school even before the MFA).
(p. 279)

The attitude that elevating artists to the status of scholars will be detrimental to their art sounds like

nothing but prejudice of the most abhorrent kind, much like similar biases against educating women or

allowing them the right to vote, either because they are believed to be incapable of such lofty pursuits, or

because it would undermine their ability to perform their domestic duties. It assumes artists are unable to

articulate coherent thoughts about the making of their own art, working only from intuition, not intellect.

Certainly it is true that not all artists are capable of PhD-level study, but only because this is true across

all academic disciplines: not all teachers, or scientists, or engineers, or mathematicians, or sociologists,

are capable of writing a 60,000-word dissertation, either. There is a legitimate reason why so few people

hold PhDs—it is one of the most challenging goals anyone can achieve and the reason why holders of this

degree are held in high esteem by society. When the question is raised, “How can you expect art students

to write 50,000-word dissertations, when my students can barely write a short Master’s thesis?” (p. viii),

the answer is that it is unreasonable to expect most of them to do so, not because they are artists, but

because this is an unattainable goal for 99% of the population in general. Using the NEA’s statistics

(Gaquin, 2008), if approximately 10% of all artists seek advanced degrees such as an MFA, only 10% of
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these, or 1% of all artists, are likely to have the drive or ability to pursue PhD study successfully, placing

PhD study for artists on the same footing as other comparable professions.

The prejudice that artists are not intellectuals underlies one of the greatest weaknesses of the

MFA: programs are predominantly focused on the making of art and do not provide students with

opportunities for intellectual growth similar to other departments of the liberal arts and sciences. Even

the admission requirements of many university programs make concessions to the assumption that artists

are not capable of the same levels of academic achievement as those in other departments, accepting

students based on their artwork, not their academic record, in much the same way as the educational

shortcomings of talented athletes are excused in favor of their prowess on the playing field. The MFA

may be evidence of an artist’s mastery of his or her artistic medium, but it is no guarantee that the holder

of this degree is a highly-qualified scholar at the same level as a PhD, prepared to teach art theory,

criticism, or philosophy. Elkins confirms this, stating:

MFAs, despite their many virtues, simply do not produce graduates who really know art theory. I
say this after twenty years teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: in all that time I
have seen no more than a couple of dozen students who were educated at the level of rigor that is
expected of, say, philosophy students in major universities. MFA students are routinely given
degrees even though they have only a sketchy, somewhat bewildered sense of such things as
deconstruction, semiotics, or psychoanalysis. (p. 280)

Moreover, because the expectation exists that MFA faculty will spend large amounts of their time making

art and submitting it to exhibitions, there is little incentive for continuing education into the scholarly

aspects of art. Instructors teaching the newest generation of artists learned everything they know about

art history, theory, and criticism up to thirty years ago and take virtually no action to rectify their outdated

understandings, remaining arrogantly unaware that their personal knowledge base has become irrelevant

or antiquated. In a postmodern world, many schools of art continue to teach Enlightenment-era

aesthetics; for instance, instructors perpetuate the prejudice against so-called “crafts” such as ceramics,

textile art, or photography—teaching that these are not among the “fine arts”—even though this has

definitively changed in contemporary aesthetic philosophy (Carroll, 2009).

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Questions and Opportunities

As Jones and Elkins each suggest, the wider emergence of visual arts doctoral programs presents

an important opportunity to question the entire university system of art education, but underlying

premises must also be brought to light and questioned as well. The idea of a “terminal degree”, for

instance, deserves a great deal of scrutiny: is it ever acceptable to stop learning, particularly for a

professional educator? (Judging by current MFA faculty, the answer would seem to be yes.) Can “too

much learning” really be harmful to an artist’s practice, or is this actually the result of inadequate or inept

instruction? Is the role of “thinker” the sole province of art historians and other PhD-holders, or can a

“maker” of art be a “thinker” as well? Why is the voice of the artist so often ignored in discussions of art

history, theory, philosophy, and criticism? Is this because of the “inferior” academic status of those

holding MFAs, or does this prejudice go deeper, rooted in a longstanding bias against artists in general?

Despite the seeming inevitability of visual arts doctorates becoming the preferred credential for

university art teaching positions, the majority of institutions have yet to adapt to this impending change.

The Professional Practices Committee of the College Art Association (CAA), for instance, published the

following statement in the fall of 2008, as Artists with PhDs went to press:

At this time, few institutions in the United States offer a PhD degree in studio art, and it does not
appear to be a trend that will continue or grow, or that the PhD will replace the MFA. To develop
a standard for a degree that has not been adequately vetted or assessed, and is considered atypical
for the studio-arts profession, is premature and may lead to confusion, rather than offer guidance,
to CAA members, their institutions, and other professional arts organizations. (CAA website)

The current scarcity of programs and the attitude of entities such as the CAA lead to an essential

question that still remains to be answered: Why? Why struggle and toil to earn a PhD in visual arts when

an MFA is still “good enough” to get a teaching job? Some people will respond to this challenge with the

same answer as “Why climb Everest?” Because it’s there: certain individuals seek to reach the pinnacle

of whatever achievement is set before them, and the visual arts PhD represents that highest level. Others

will see the handwriting on the wall and take more a pragmatic view: earning a PhD will maximize a

student’s opportunity to get a teaching job in an extremely competitive marketplace already over-crowded

with MFAs. For others, the PhD represents the earning of respect, the membership card granting entrance
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 17

to an exclusive club from which artists have continuously been banned: the community of scholars.

Whatever the rationale, however, the end goal is the same: to get a job as a professor. Only independently

wealthy dilettantes can afford to stay in college for ten years simply to make “better” art. Students justify

the trouble and expense of medical school or law school because they will become highly paid

professionals, enabling them to pay off the mountain of student debt they will have accrued in order to

earn this credential; for visual arts doctoral students, this goal is a tenure-track university teaching

position. To deny this, proposing that students should study for the sake of art alone is pie-in-the-sky

thinking, if not an outright denial of reality.

Art schools, for all their lofty talk about the virtues of an artistic vocation, oftentimes fail to equip

their graduates for the real world. Artists tend to experience “unemployment rates roughly twice those of

other professionals… annual earnings ranging from 77 to 88 percent of the average earnings of other

professionals” and “higher rates of multiple jobholding [moonlighting] than persons in the overall

workforce, higher than even those of other professionals” (http://arts.endow.gov/research/

Researcharts/Summary40.html). It is doubtful if students would undertake even BFA study knowing that

they are so likely to experience economic hardship. Art schools would do well to acknowledge this

situation, especially in such trying economic times, and consider just what they are preparing their

graduates for. In any industry driven by talent—athletics, entertainment, or the arts—not many people

become truly successful, and the road to success is not always paved by an education: star basketball

players are sometimes drafted to the NBA straight from high school, young musicians become stars by

way of “American Idol”, and visual artists might be the next Pablo Picasso or Georgia O’Keeffe (neither

of whom completed a formal art education) without a college degree. Art schools must examine the

progression of learning all the way from Bachelors through Doctorate, comparing their degree

requirements to those of other university departments. It should not be easier to earn a doctorate in visual

art than it is for a comparable achievement in other fields of study, but neither should it be more difficult.

For instance, under the European university system, students typically enter doctoral study following a
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 18

one-year/30-hour MA, not a two-year/60-hour MFA as they do in American universities.4 “Art is not so

special that its Doctorate has to be so much more time consuming, difficult and therefore expensive than

other Doctorates” (Jones, 2006, in Elkins p. 84).

The Dissertation

The problem of just what a visual arts dissertation ought to comprise is a difficult one, and there

are multiple ways of addressing this issue, all of which are dependent on complex philosophical positions.

As seen in Artists with PhDs, European studio-art doctoral programs accept that a work of art can be a

legitimate outcome of research as the embodiment of new knowledge. This is not yet widely

acknowledged in American universities, but Jones offers this advice:

The idea of art as a process of inquiry is the keystone of art research. Process supposes an
aesthetic of method as against an aesthetic of style, a concept that has yet to be fully worked
through, but one that places educational creativity at the center of aesthetic creativity in a way
pioneered by Joseph Beuys. Look too to the place of John Dewey and Donald Schon in
American educational heritage: their precedents for learning through activity are the foundations
of the studio art doctorate. Art research, therefore, already has a strong provenance in US culture
even if it is not yet widely celebrated. (in Elkins, p. 82)

Acceptance of a work of art in place of, or in addition to, a written dissertation may come in time, but

American doctorates across all other disciplines are awarded only after the writing of a dissertation. This

is the coin of the realm, so to speak, and even if artists passionately believe their artwork to be equally

exemplary specimens of research and new knowledge or can cite dozens of philosophers and theoreticians

in support of their position, the jury of their peers—professors of other disciplines—is likely to remain

unconvinced for quite some time. Until visual objects are more widely conceived of as being equivalent

to written works of scholarship, a visual arts PhD must include a text-based dissertation, although this

may be submitted in conjunction with a portfolio of artwork in some cases. As in many European

programs, a Doctorate of Fine Art (DFA) might be awarded for doctoral programs ending with an art

4
This varies by institution. Texas Tech, for instance, will accept students into the FADP with a 30-hour
MA, officially requiring 90 cumulative hours of graduate study for the PhD. Students who have already
completed hours above this, as with an MFA, must often still complete all 60 hours of credit within the
FADP: it is difficult for students to secure approval of transfer credits.
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 19

exhibition instead of a written dissertation; however, this subjects the degree to the same legitimate

criticisms as its European cousins that such programs:

“are a kind of prolonged MFA, with students just sitting in their studios another two or three
years, producing more of the same art, writing about themselves, navel-gazing, trying to achieve a
pinnacle of self-awareness that may or may not make their work more interesting.” (Elkins, p.
277)

Visual arts PhD programs must operate within the confines of the American university system as

it exists today, not as they wish it to be, and this includes challenging coursework, independent scholarly

research, and a written dissertation. Artists’ academic pursuits must be of like kind and quality to that of

other disciplines, or artists will never find acceptance in the community of scholars. It is just as

unreasonable for artists to expect that academic requirements will be altered to accommodate their

dissertation preferences as it would be for a group of athletes to demand that the rules of basketball be

changed in order to allow selected players to tuck the ball under their arms like a football and run towards

the basket instead of dribbling the ball down the court. Rules—in sports and in academia—undoubtedly

change over time, but to be included in the game, one has to start by following the rules. Certainly there

are exceptions to this: Title IX in women’s collegiate sports comes to mind—yet even though this

legislation was passed in 1972, few women have earned spots on a university football team. Yes, artists

can certainly earn a doctorate, but if they want this degree to be of equal value to that of other disciplines,

they must go about this in the same way as students in any other department and not expect that all the

rules will be changed just for them.

A Personal Statement

Like Dr. Elkins (p. xi), I admit I am not writing from a neutral position. I earned my PhD in 2011

from Texas Tech University’s Fine Arts Doctoral Program, having earned my MFA in 2008 from Tulane

University in New Orleans, LA, and my BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. I

entered academia somewhat late in life, beginning my studies at SAIC in 2003, following a career in

business. I became aware of the trend towards doctorates for studio artists while I was an undergraduate

at SAIC, and by the time I embarked upon my graduate work at Tulane I determined that it would be
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 20

beneficial for me to seek a PhD, both because it would be likely to improve my chances of finding a

teaching position and because I felt a growing desire to prove that artists can, and should, be scholars or

philosophers, not just makers of art. My doctorate is in Critical Studies and Artistic Practice, not studio-

art.

I acknowledge that I am personally acquainted with Dr. Elkins, though I was never one of his

students, and that I applied to be a fellow at his 2009 Stone Summer Theory Institute (SSTI). The faculty

and fellows of the SSTI, as they were in 2008, are heavily weighted towards European academic art

programs, and none are from the American doctoral programs currently in existence (J. Elkins, personal

communication, July 30, 2009). Elkins’ choice of participants for his SSTI sessions, like the contributing

authors in Artists with PhDs, reflects an elitism that I find to be just as unpalatable as his blanket

dismissal of existing American visual arts PhD programs. Answers to the problems of a PhD for artists in

America must be found at home, not abroad, although we can certainly learn from the lessons of

European programs. As Jones writes, we should “recognize that different contexts require different

solutions to common problems. There is a distinctive American way of dealing with art research and

research degrees in art” (in Elkins, p. 82).

I feel strongly that the establishment of European-style DFA programs is inadvisable for

American institutions of higher learning seeking to open new doctoral programs in visual art: a doctorate

degree, in art or any other academic discipline, should represent the highest levels of scholarship, and I do

not believe this will be true of a DFA if it culminates primarily in a work of art, as the MFA already does.

The product of research must be presented in textual form alongside a work of art, because no matter how

excellent or innovative a work of art may be, it cannot communicate the artist’s knowledge

comprehensively in a non-verbal format, especially to an audience of non-artists such as professors

outside of the art department. In Chapter 5 of Artists with PhDs, Victor Burgin writes of a 1996

conversation between Bernard Stiegler and Jacques Derrida, who tells of teaching a course in California

in which two students, with his permission, submitted videocassettes in response to an assignment instead
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 21

of a written paper. Derrida was intrigued by this possibility, but in the end had to reject their efforts,

explaining to the students:

If your film had been accompanied—or articulated with—a discourse refined according to the
norms that matter to me, then I would have been more receptive, but this was not the case, what
you are proposing to me is coming in the place of discourse but does not adequately replace it”
(quoted by Burgin, in Elkins p. 77, 78).

I find this to be true in my own artistic practice: I am a social documentary photographer, and no matter

how self-explanatory my images may seem, there is inevitably more to them than meets the eye. For

example, I produced a photo of a woman lying in the doorway of a business in the French Quarter of New

Orleans. The viewer’s immediate assumption is that she is drunk and has passed out on the sidewalk (not

an unusual sight in the French Quarter); however, only if I tell the viewer that the woman in the photo

was the victim of a mugging, and that I photographed her as I accompanied two police officers on their

nightly patrol, does the image achieve its full meaning, often followed by further conversation about the

social ills of this troubled city. Images can be the springboard for discussion, and a picture is often worth

a thousand words, but even sixty pictures are not the equivalent of a 60,000-word dissertation.

For the record, my MFA show featured 68 photographs of New Orleans during the second and

third year post-Katrina, examining the social implications of politics, poverty, decay, and attempts at

rebuilding amid this singular cultural and historical setting. Even though only a five-page “thesis” (really

an extended artist’s statement) was required, I wrote an 80-page research paper on social documentary

photography, partially in response to faculty members’ ongoing insistence that documentary photography

was “not art”. It would be fair to accuse me of being an opinionated overachiever, and I freely admit my

pursuit of a PhD is an attempt to justify and enhance my art practice through scholarly research as well as

a carefully reasoned effort to qualify myself to teach in a fine art doctoral program upon graduation.

This paper is not an attempt to dismiss or discredit Dr. Elkins’ views on the subject of artists with

PhDs, but after a thorough examination of his book, I felt it was important to present an alternate view. I

firmly believe that the American programs currently in place merit close examination at the same level as

their European counterparts. I distrust the notion that a work of art can be the sole outcome of artistic
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 22

research qualifying the artist as a scholar, particularly under the present American university system: this

will not occur without drastic (and unlikely) changes to that system, or it will result in the creation of

doctoral programs that will only perpetuate the shortcomings of the MFA. I also believe that it is

imperative for artists to produce scholarly work of like kind and quality as their colleagues in other

professional fields if they wish to be considered equal members of the community of scholars, or they

will find that they have gained nothing and will continue to be relegated to the sidelines of academia. A

practice-based DFA will be counter-productive, serving to solidify the foundational assumption of many

art historians—artists make, while scholars think—but a more traditional approach to a PhD in visual art

will serve to lend legitimacy to the scholarly work and intellectual capabilities of artists.

I would also like to raise a final issue: the emergence of this degree is bound to create a

significant amount of dysfunction within art departments, imposing yet another level of resentment and

competition to already-contentious professional relationships, particularly in departments that have

historically been run by MFAs. I can only speak from personal experience, not having independent

research data to draw from, but I can testify that at every institution I have attended there is palpable

tension between the art history or visual studies faculty, most of whom have PhDs in their fields, and the

studio-art faculty, all of whom hold MFAs. Even at the School of the Art Institute, this prejudice was

evident: I recall being a student in an art history class, during which an arrogant art history graduate

teaching assistant told the audience of studio-art students, “You make the art, we’ll tell you what it

means.” At Tulane, the idea of a studio-arts doctorate was haughtily dismissed by nearly all the art

faculty, and at Texas Tech, where the Fine Arts Doctoral Program has been awarding PhDs for over thirty

years, the studio-art professors harbor such hostility towards the visual arts PhD students that we are not

even allowed to use studio space nor serve as graduate instructors of studio courses.

Department chairs and other administrators of schools seeking to add a visual art PhD to their

educational program will need to be strong leaders who inspire confidence in their current faculty,

reassuring their MFA faculty members that their skills in the studio are still needed and their jobs are

secure, while simultaneously convincing the art historians and other PhD faculty that the new visual arts
 VISUAL ARTS PHD 23

doctorates will lead to greater respect for the art department and important developments in the wider

world of art. They will need to lead their faculties in functioning as cohesive teams, not as warring tribes.

No small task, to be sure. Until these problems can be overcome, universities should approach the launch

of visual arts doctoral programs with great caution and measured wisdom.

Without a doubt, there are serious issues to consider as we face the wider emergence of visual arts

doctorates in American universities and art schools, but there are also exciting opportunities to re-think

and re-envision the entire system of art education, building on what is good and improving areas where

there are flaws and weaknesses. Artists are an important part of the American workforce and hold a

unique and important place in society as professionals who make valuable contributions to culture.

Recognition of the reality that educating artists holds just as much validity as scholarly pursuits in other

liberal arts and sciences and is therefore equally worthy of doctoral-level study represents a significant,

but necessary, shift in traditional university values—a goal that will be of benefit to all participants in art

education no matter what their position or degree status.

 VISUAL ARTS PHD 24

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