York is getting $85 million for a second engineering building. That’s $85 million fine arts will never see.
I understand York’s intentions to push for the sciences, to build a new reputation, and gear up for the future. What saddens me is that our longstanding reputation as an arts school is diminishing.
It’s surprising that we would allow the reputation of York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, one of Canada’s first and largest fine arts faculties, to be forgotten in favor of something York has never been commonly associated with.
The truth is, I’m an artist, a student
in the visual arts program, and completely biased; but it is this bias that allows me to present the perspective that is so often overlooked.
When it was time for me to carve out my path for post-secondary education, York was the only real option, aside from the Ontario College of Art and Design. What makes York’s fine arts program so unique is that it caters to all types of art, like music, theatre, and film, and brings to the table a reputable faculty.
Moreover, York strives for interdisciplinary education, and enhances the fine arts program with mandatory classes called ‘in-outs’ (in our faculty, but out of our major). In this way, York is flexible and different.
It seems like the Faculty of Fine Arts is gradually disappearing, stream by stream. Two years ago, a whole fine arts stream, called Fine Art Culture Studies, was closed. Most people didn’t even know the program existed.
How could such a renowned faculty with well-known staff, and alumni who are widely recognized in their fields, be disregarded by the school that helped shape it?
The future is here, and people turn to the sciences to graduate, and find a job.
But what York needs to be reminded of is that amongst sciences and the other departments that make up our university, the fine arts faculty still does the most to contribute to the culture we have on campus.
I also find the general disposition that art is secondary to the sciences, and doesn’t have a place in higher education, concerning.
One of my first-year mandatory fine arts classes stressed that to become a doctor or a lawyer, you have to go through schooling in order to be deemed ‘qualified,’ and that becoming an artist is no different.
These are the fundamentals that I have been taught since the beginning of my post-secondary education. York has taught me that art does have a place in academia, and that theories, skill, and experience enable us to call ourselves artists.
Scientific innovation shapes our understanding of the world around us; art communicates things on a deeper level, and questions the status quo.
Ultimately, we shouldn’t have to choose which discipline is more important. It is with both disciplines that society can move forward.
Sarah Ciantar
Arts Editor
