For decades professional education of artists and art critics was based on a number of disciplines adopted in a century before last. Future artists were raised on the academic system, studying plaster casts from antique and ecorche, painting from life nude figures in workshops of Academy of Arts and other highest art institutions. Process of becoming a professional took many years in the XIX century. Art critics studied history of world and domestic art and wrote term papers and diplomas, once again repeating Vipper, Lazarev, Alpatov's ideas and the other pillars of domestic science about art. Works of the well-known Swiss art critic of the first half of the XX century Heinrich Wölfflin were a standard of the formal analysis of an art piece during many decades. In the West, especially in the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, since 1960ies there was a radical breaking point of traditional art education which practically led to disappearance of the academic disciplines from Universities and art schools, substituted by practical studying of actual photos, videos and media technologies, the analysis of ways of self-expression of the artist in installations, performances, computer art programs. Art critics began to prepare curator projects about contemporary art, having armed with the theory of psychoanalysis and philosophy of in style French structuralism.

Now the tendency of refusal of the academic dogmas in favor of creativity, free from a framework of schools and traditions, continues to develop. To what degree this process is constructive, whether it reflects inquiries of time, or it is a tribute to quickly changing fashion? All these issues are going to be discussed at the round table between the participants: artists, curators, critics, art critics, professors of Universities and art schools of the country. Foreign artists, critics and theorists of the contemporary art are invited to participation.

Program

11:00–17:00

Start break

11:00–14:00 Discussion I

Modern system of the academic and University art education. What are the differences? 

Area of discussion: which subjects and how to teach future professionals; following the traditions or innovative experiments; university practicum (exhibitions, colloquiums, master classes) as a basis of training of art professionals; what graduates think of the system of modern preparation at the university; who can be the mentor of students, etc.

Participants of the discussion: Silvia Burini (Ca' Foskari University, Venice), Irina Bakanova (The State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), Stanislav Savitsky, Lyudmila Davydova (The State Hermitage Museum)...

Discussion II

What education the contemporary artist needs?

Area of discussion: true or false — academic education holds down freedom of creativity; how the artist is supposed to be trained in the academies and at the universities; whether vocational art education is necessary in general; boundaries of creative freedom within modern art institutions; the contemporary artist in the museum, on the biennial, at an art fair: priorities...

Participants of the discussion: Andrey Fomenko, Ivan Govorkov, Pavel Ignatyev, Alexander Dashevsky, Piotr Bely, Marina Koldobskaya, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Anna Matveeva...

14:00-15:00 Lunch

15:00-17:00 Discussion III

Curator of exhibitions of the modern and contemporary art as a profession. Galleries, museums, biennial...

Area of discussion: education for curators at universities –  is there any specifics; is it necessary for the curator to study classical art history; what is the ideal curator for the artist; an artist as a curator, a curator as an artist...

Participants of the discussion: Sophie Mouquin (Director of Educational programs, School of Louvre, Paris), Dimitry Ozerkov, Natalya Kurchanova (New York), Olesya Turkina, Gleb Yershov, Marina Dzhigarkhanyan, Lizaveta Matveeva, Dimitri Novik...

Discussion IV

Moderators at the exhibitions in the museum, the biennial, gallery: who they are?

Area of discussion: is it possible to teach museum professions (the curator, the keeper, the guide) at the university; educational programs as part of the exhibition project in the museum; the guide or the curator — what is the difference; how to prepare a mediator; a mediator at an exhibition of the contemporary art, what are mediator's goals...

Participants of the discussion: Alexey Boyko, Sofia Kudryavtseva, Joana Monbaron, Alexander Ivanov, Valeria Karpovich, Lyudmila Torshina, Anna Chernenkova...

Coffee break

Final discussion