Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

Page 22 text:

VANDERBILT AND THE ARTS By Dan Bischoff It took Vanderbilt ninety years to come up with a Fine Arts Department. Eleven years ago, in 1963, the field of the visual arts here was as bare as a Michelangesque land- scape. There were few-very few-art history courses being taught by the resident painter and sculptor, Puryear Mims, but he was entirely alone on campus. Perhaps 300 students were being reached by those courses, and only four were art majors. That was the year Hamilton Hazelhurst was brought to Vanderbilt to found and chair a Fine Arts Department. Now there are eight faculty members feight and a half, according to Hazlehurst, counting the arrangement with Peabody that maintains one of their staff here on campus with Vanderbilt fundsl, teaching an estimated 1700 stu- dents in art history. There are 70 students who are majoring in art history with the option of going on to a four-year-old masters program. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy every aspect of this, Hazelhurst said, smiling. The enthusiasm of the students has been marvelous, as has been the support of the administration. There isn't any place I would rather be. Not to suggest that that satisfaction isn't tem- pered with the challenge of a need for improvement. Vanderbilt has yet to establish a doctoral pro- gram-though Hazelhurst hopes to have one soon-and the present facilities fail to provide an adequate art reference library and study center. Although the theater arts are rather solidly repre- sented by the Vanderbilt University Theater, the idea of a music curriculum on campus seems to have gone a bit flat. Expansion in these and other areas-notably art studio courses-must be cautious, however, for Ha- zelhurst hopes to develop a greater co-ordination between the art departments and facilities of the Nashville University Center schools to provide a diverse and comprehensive curriculum. If we hope to bring these departments, say at Fisk and Peabody, into closer work with us, we must be careful to avoid duplication . . . music has never been important because of a lack of money. B THE PLONI NILKX Now it would be a duplication of the services Pea- body offers. Steps have already been taken that forecast the proposed interchange, such as the presence of six Peabody faculty members who teach at least one course here on Vanderbilt salaries, and Hazelhurst continues to press for a final unification. But that time seems to be somewhere in the distant future, and Vanderbilt has its own problems right now. We need a constant and readily availa- ble library reference system, especially in the picto- rial category to which We must constantly refer fthe Joint University Library Art Room is pre- sently stocked with general circulation booksl, and I would like to see this new library equipped with a modern study hall, perhaps in a building adjoining this one fthe Fine Arts Building, housed in the Old Gyml. We would want a computerized slide system so that the students could come here and view the material as they can now only do in class . . . and we would also like to have an adequate facility for the housing of our permanent collection. The permanent collection, which is now only five years old, is basically a study collection with ar- tifacts from all ages. Over 890,000 has been obtained for the collection fund through gifts and through the Art Association Lecture Series, to which faculty members have contributed their time. But for a really significant endowment to grow alumni con- tributions are necessary, and they come few and far between. Vanderbilt has been slow to support the arts because it came in contact with them relatively late. The alumni are mostly ignorant of the fine arts, when they were here they received little training in them. The connection between this uni- versity and the arts is not made in the minds of most people. But when this group of students, your group, graduates, I expect they will give most gen- erouslyf' Hazelhurst hopes that the unification of the NUC will help in this area too. Not only would it establish a stronger curriculum for the student body, but it would also establish a truly impressive department, one which would attract more con- tributions. And the amalgamation of the various permanent collections would create an excellent

Page 21 text:

Riots break out in Black Town, exceeding in kind and degree those oftwenty years earlier. A contingency plan is effected and Black Towns are fenced off. Black para-military groups send out commando groups to kidnap white suburban children and hold them hostage in Black Towns. Then, by plan, and simultaneously, Black Towns are set afire-from New York to Oakland, from Atlanta to Chicago. Firemen won't go in, can't get in anyway. Black Towns are destroyed. Many die. More are hurt. Millions cry, Feed us. House us. Military camps are opened to receive and process them .... On the political scene, the focus is on General Westmoreland . He had been elected Governor of South Carolina in 1974 and Senator in 1978. The General was now known as the Architect of our Victory in Vietnam , and he was the candidate of all major parties in 1984's last year's Presidential election. As President he has appealed to the good people , a first made legitimate in Nixon's Omnibus Crime Bill fifteen years earlier. President Westmoreland no longer advocates search and destroy . Now, in a more sophisticated vein, he appeals for our nation to isolate and contain bad people , chief among whom are destroyers of property. Under President Westmoreland , the police state described by Jacques Ellul in the mid-fifties, now comes into being. Consider an inquistorial and brutal police force that operates as it pleases and carries out arrests arbitrarily. No citizen has any peace of mind. Yet the only remedy so far devised for the disease is the establishment of the hypermodern system of dossiers. Every citizen is kept track of throughout his life, geographically, biologically, and eco- nomically, the police know precisely what he is up to at every moment. This police system no longer needs to be brutal, openly inquisitorial, or omnipresent to the public consciousness. But it permeates all of life, in a way the average citizen finds it impossible to understand. Just what has been gained? Admittedly, man need no longer be apprehensive at work, or live perpetually under suspicion, or be afraid of being subjected to the third degree . The terror which until now has been an integral part of the police methods of totalitarian states is, or soon will be, a thing of the past. A diffuse terror usually follows open police raids and public executions. At this stage, the police may be invisible, but they lurk in the shadows. One hears tales of secret executions in the soundproof cellars of vast, mysterious buildings. At a still more advanced stage of police technique, even this diffuse terror gradually dissipates. The police exist only to protect good citizens . They no longer carry out raids and there is nothing mysterious about themg therefore they are not felt to be oppressive. Police work has become scientific Their files contain dossiers of every citizen. The police are in a position to lay hands on anyone wanted at any moment, and this obviates to a great degree the necessity of doing so. No one can evade the police or disappear. But then, no one wants to. An electronic dossier is not particularly fearsome. And the good people have nothing to fear. The Technological Society Vintage edition, 1964 What will religion be then? The associations of the good people , naturally, what else? And what will religion do then? Condemn the bad people , of course, and justify the government's course of action as necessary . Property rights will rise to the status of religious belief, and the old, old nemesis of religion, the good prosper and the evil suffer will be elevated to functional dogma. Such religion will flourish in the future. Again, I repeat, this is historically and theologically, heresy, perver- sion, andidolatry. I find it abominable but entirely likely. Before I quit, there is one other bit of forth-telling to do about religion's future in America. It's also an old, old scenario. In the Jewish Scriptures fsome of us call them the Old Testamentnj, this scenario is called the remnant -a surviving remnant , a saving remnant . It is from this concept that we should take a clue about religion's future. Robert Jay Lifton, the Yale psychiatrist, has helped me, via his award-winnirrg book, Death in Life to put this idea of a remnant in contemporary perspective. In writing about Hiroshima and the sur- vivors lthe remnant? of the atomic blast, Lifton introduces us to the Japanese term hibakusha . It means, literally, an explosion affected personf' Hibakusha are those who are touched by death, bodily or psychically and who yet remain alive. In a sense, Paul saw Jesus as an hibakusha, as one who died, was marked by his immersion into it, and was made alive again. He was plunged into death and returned as a survivor. And Paul claims that anyone baptized into Christ must be baptized into his death. A disciple is an hibakusha, one touched by death and yet remaining alive. To be a part of a surviving remnant is not a light thing, it is to have survived. Before any contemporary person yeams for remnant status, let Elie Wiesel and other survivors of the holocaust be heard: Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has tumed my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw tumed into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all etemity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. Night fAvon, 19581 If the role of a Christian in our world is to be an hibakusha, then let that Christian know that becoming hibakusha means being marked by death. The role of a survivor is not an easy one. There is the shock of having survived, the resentment, the guilt. There is also that counter peril of self-righteousness, ever present for one who survives. However, what is really also true is, as Lifton says in another essay, fAmerican Poetry Review, Jan.!Feb. 19731, that . . . we are not only survivors of holocausts which have already occurred but those we can imagine or anticipate as well. fitalics minel Perhaps, in that sense, we here are already survivors. But there is a question. The question is, can we really take my two scenarios before this one seriously and survive? Can we imagine holocaust and survive? Can we anticipate the usofter death of the human spirit so often induced in a consumer society? Can we survive the world of spectacle and non-event, the world of instantly new where there is no history ? Can we survive the deformations, dislocations, and imaginative impediments of funda- mentalist revivalism, which joins the rest of culture in psychically numbing us and assuring us of staying on the sunny side of life. ? Lifton seems to believe that we can: In struggling to reorder his experience fthe survivorl can contribute to the general reordering so widely craved . . . the psychological emana- tions-from past holocausts and their survivors, from anticipated holo- causts and their imagined survivors, the painful wisdom of the survivor, can, at least potentially, become universal wisdom. titalics minel Perhaps, then, the future of religion in its best historical sense lies with those called to be hibakusha, marked by death and by the painful wisdom of having survived, of being a part of a redeeming remnant still alive for a purpose. Lifton states it well: What I am suggesting is that 'to touch death' and then rejoin the living can be a source of insight and power, and that this is true not only for those exposed to holocaust, or to the death of a parent or a lover or friend, but also to those who permitted themselves to experience fully the end of an era, personal or historical. fitalics minel CAMPUS MINISTRY I I5

Page 23 text:

study and dissemination center for the arts. Beyond the strong history department curricu- lum and Vanderbilt's ability to raise money, the University would have the Contini-Volterra ar- chives as an asset to the developing NUC co-or- dination. The archives is a unique collection of over 55,000 photographs of Italian Renaissance materi- als that would go a long way toward making grad- uate work here valuable and attractive. Hazelhurstis confident of the advancement of the arts at Vanderbilt in the future, and he points to the rapid growth of the history curriculum as an indication of the possibilities. If anyone had come here 10 years before I did they wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything . . . now our classes are overflowing. The beginning that we have had in this field has inspired students to take an interest in the studio courses at the Art House, where Don Evans has stirred up a great deal of enthusiasm himself. I'm glad I came, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. We have succeeded in getting a most congenial group together famong the facultyj, he continued. We have a great time. I've known many depart- ments that have omnipresent undercurrents of pol- itics and intrigue, but there is nothing like that here. I think that we have been very lucky. Perhaps the greatest recent change in the situa- tion of the arts at Vanderbilt came with the acqui- sition of the Old Science building to house studios two years ago. Hazelhurst pointed out that this move alleviated the serious space problem that had confronted the department in the past while pro- viding the campus with a creative focal point of artistic expression. Don Evans, the well-known and rather flamboyant head of the Art House fwhich has gone under assorted aliases since its creation, most recently that of Media Experimentation and Co-ordination Center for the Arts, or MECCAJ is as pleased with the facility as Hazelhurst, though he has some strong misgivings about how long he will be able to maintain it. This building, if given a few minor renovations, is perfect for our purposes. It has space, volume, high ceilings, and windows-all of which are great for a studio. Though it wouldn't do for a normal classroom activities anymore, I believe that it would serve us better than anything we might find THE ARTS 17