Workshop Leader: Mariah Doren, Parsons School of Design, The New School
In this workshop we will share, discuss, and test new ways of thinking about the critique of our students’ artwork. We will start with an overview of how traditional critiques are run, the anxiety that students have about them, and why we do it this way. We will discuss the role of assessment broadly, including the difference between formative, summative, and developmental assessments. We will also spend some time looking at how the idea of originality is often presented to students, and how meaning construction and objective assessments sometimes work at cross-purposes during critiques. I am interested in how this traditional format and the narrative that goes along with it seem to be an impediment to a more open dialogue about possible meanings in our students’ work. If our hope is that our students’ art practice includes discovery, experimentation, unfolding meanings, and building value, we need to disengage its practices from linear expectations of originality, ideals of progress, and long standing traditions of assessment. We need to move toward something else. If the goal is to open up a dialogue, to separate a conversation about meaning from a tense performance of public judgment, how is this done? We will model critique formats I have used, some that colleagues have shared and hopefully, some that participants bring to the table.
Workshop Specializations: Pedagogy-Educational Strategies-Teaching Methodology, Materials-Art Making Techniques-Studio Practice
Required Workshop Materials: Paper and pencil or pen for quick drawing.
