NEWS: Bridge Editors Respond to “Sunsetting” of SAIC’s New Arts Journalism Program
NEWS
Bridge Editors Respond to “Sunsetting” of SAIC’s New Arts Journalism Program
With the death by "sunsetting" of its New Arts Journalism program as originally reported by the school’s F Newsmagazine, another few-of-its-kind arts writing program disappears from the curriculum at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
This will cause long-term damage to art and cultural literacy in the public sphere, roll back the watchdog role of arts journalism over the art world's increasingly neoliberalized institutions, and further impoverish the availability of art historical "first draft" coverage critical to student and post-graduate success in attaining awards, from grants to fellowships, and to visual critical literacy among the collecting classes. And for this to be happening now, as the Writers Guild of America mounts the largest strike in the nation in the last twenty years is an unconscionable dismissal of the essential value of writers to the art cultural fabric of this country. Shame on SAIC and the members of its academic senate for taking the usual "cut the writers first" approach to dwindling enrollment, and adding their voices to the current pervasive anti-participatory, anti-inclusive Democracy messaging disguised as anti-literacy campaigns raging across this great nation.
-The Editors
