Dear Robert,
No problem at all. I thought you wrote a reasonable and interesting post,
nicely argued. You raised some very good points, and these points brought
forth good contributions -- including Janet's response and then mine.
While I disagreed with the specific point, I thought the post was valuable.
The list is a place for exploring ideas -- I was hoping to further the debate,
but not to rein it in.
Your main point was genuinely fruitful. You asked what the situation might
be today if art and design schools in the UK had been integrated into the
university system in the 1840s. One might ask the same question of Germany,
either in the years of the Humboldt reforms of the early 1800s or the years of
technological and scientific development at the other end of the century. In
the United States, one might ask what might have happened had this taken
place with the development of the great land grant universities.
Simply thinking about this proposition brings to mind extraordinary thoughts.
Even today, the question of integration into research universities requires us
to think about design -- or art and design -- in new ways. I work at a
design faculty in a young university that has just entered the Shanghai Jiao Tong
index, a university with a heavy focus on science and technology in a
city with two great universities known for the humanities. I ask these
kinds of questions every day in different ways.
Your post frames the question in a new and interesting way. I certainly
hadn't thought of this historical "what if" perspective -- I'm glad you did.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
>>> Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]> 12/13/2009 12:42 AM >>>
--snip--
Point taken. If I express such a thought again, I'll try and
make sure it is less 'odd' and more 'supported'.
I guess I'm still trying to find my range on this list...
--snip--
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