There is immensely meaningful and empowering work being done in the art spheres at Duke: from the many shows celebrating the rich culture here to the impactful exhibits in the Rubenstein Library and the Goodson Chapel. Many works are being shown on campus, and many more are being created. But how much of this exploration and engagement extends beyond that immediate circle? On a daily basis, we consume infinitely more art than we can even imagine producing in a lifetime. But how intensively do we engage with this art? How much does the average Duke student care about art?
For one, the student view of the Nasher leaves much to be desired. In my many visits, it is not rare to see the many students pose at the Nasher Cafe. The museum serves a far greater purpose than aesthetic Instagram feeds. Yet it is rare to see someone pause and take in the artwork, much less discuss it with anyone around. There seems to be an air of indifference toward the many exhibits that come and go.
The Nasher is a living museum that allows us to view the larger scope of human existence. It is a chance to escape “the Duke Bubble” that so many try to find. It is distinct, with a focus that emphasizes the lives and collective struggles of the identities and ideas of being human. It allows us to foster community, especially when it empowers the artists and perspectives of today, and what is important in our shared collective mind. From exhibits exploring the nature of identity when it is denied to us (“Numbers” by Sherrill Roland explores the dehumanization of inmates during incarceration) to studying the way we’re redefining what nature is, in a world that is rapidly losing it (“Second Nature” explores photography in the Age of the Anthropocene and the impact of humans on the world). These pieces, and the discussion they bring, influence and impact not only the present but the future we have and prioritise.
And, it does matter what we as students prioritise and how we value what we have. Beyond the consumption of the “artistic canon” in museums, it is important to contemplate our artistic production. The Duke student body suffers deeply from Canva syndrome: Marketing design has now become a never-ending gallery of insufferably generic Canva designs. In an era of generative AI, it seems like no one really needs to know how to do anything. There’s always a service for it. Do I expect the most groundbreaking, abstract-surrealist-kafka-esque-anti-design poster for another consulting info session? Not really. But trust me, we could gain so much by allowing just a bit of self-expression and diversity, by breaking the boundaries a little.
This is meaningful, because graphic design has always been viewed as a sort of “utilitarian” counterpart to art: with a strict sense of principles that come along with it. But students have always redefined what it means to design: Graphic design has been one of the many ways students at college campuses express themselves. They create posters for the things they are passionate about and design for social meaning and personal connection. The aim is not solely to convey or persuade, but also to express oneself. In this way, students and their culture and notions towards design form the cornerstone of self-expression and engagement with the arts.
So when we all use the same Canva templates and use DALL-E (or Stable Diffusion, if you’re fancy like that) to generate the same pastel gradient posters for our clubs, we lose out on the human touch of art. I’d be happy to return to MS Word Art and ‘90s web design if it meant I would never see these generic “anti-design” designs ever again. Our biggest loss is the death of individuality in design — and, in a larger sense, the essence of art itself, which is ironic given we live in an era where everything is algorithmically individualized for our tastes.
And it shows, in the design elements that blend into each other, in the History Union posters that are indistinguishable from the AKPsi posters. Because at the core, these algorithms all want us to be the same: mindless consumers. They succeed if we stop engaging, if we see art not as a means of connection, but as a means of corporate communication. And we are: We consume it as if it’s fast food, constantly stimulating all of our senses, overwhelming them, just to prevent the minute possibility of a single thought occurring. We consume art, but we don’t engage in it. Because if thoughts occur, we have to act on them. We have to contemplate the state of the world, and the state of our existence in it. And we (and our capitalist overlords) would be much happier if we didn’t.
So what? Isn’t it the same everywhere? The consumption of art in such fashion, the reduction of its inherent cultural value as you spend an equivalent amount of time viewing (and double-tapping) a work of art — one that an artist poured hours of their heart and soul into, mind you — and yet another disappointed-cat meme. Everyone lives like this. This is the new reality.
Or so some would argue. But on campuses elsewhere, communities are being fostered around art, around the ingenuity of human creation. While we tent for days in the freezing cold for basketball games, undergraduates at the University of Chicago line up for Picasso paintings to keep in their dorms for a year. Art to Live With, a premiere art loan program at the University of Chicago, provides students with artworks from their collection to display in their dorms for an entire academic year. The whole program operates on a first-come-first-serve basis, and so it becomes a huge celebration week of the arts during the fall semester, where students (especially first years) bond and forge connections over a shared love for art, created by artists around the world — from Francisco Goya to Takashi Murakami — and loved by students around the world.
Other campuses share a similar intellectual vein and love for developing a community around art and art makers. Princeton opens its historic art museums for an annual night crawl — imagine you’re Ben Stiller in “Night At The Museum” — and Harvard has its annual Arts First festival, a celebration of creation through exhibits and performances produced by students. MIT goes hard (if you ask me): Each year, graduating students design their own class ring (the “Brass Rat”).
In ways like these, other institutions keep alive a culture of engagement and reflection of togetherness through art. They contemplate the creation of the past, of the present, of the future. I firmly believe art (and its interpretation) to be one of the major cornerstones of a liberal arts education, and while Duke enforces it through an arts requirement (with dubious success), this enforcement hardly sustains the intellectual culture we should be aiming for, in a world that pushes you to consume more and think less. After all, if we cease thinking, or motivate a superficial sort of it, we won’t reflect. We won’t understand our place in the world — much less want to change it — for we would exist in a state of blissful ignorance and indifference, where we think what we’re supposed to, or even better, not at all. We do what we are assigned to do: nothing more, nothing less.
But beyond this enforcement, it seems that Duke lacks this push for getting its students engaged in the arts. Arts week comes around for every freshman, but what after? Engagement with the arts eventually becomes a niche: “Leave it to the artsy humanities majors, while we study something ‘real,’” some might say. We do not reflect on art, much less create it. Art drives self-meditation, pushes us to reflect on what has been our story, our purpose, our meaning. It is a process of patience and introspection, and its outcome is creation. By creating, we become involved in the universe’s process of creation and destruction, rather than being passive watchers with minds of high entropy: chaotic, lacking meaning or motivation. What the universe does in creating grand galaxies, or destroying bright stars, we reflect (at a much smaller scale) by creating meaning in society, and destroying injustices.
It is what makes art the cornerstone of the liberal arts, for this patience, introspection and self-actualization are the catalysts for a human being that lives, rather than survives. When we refuse art, we cease reflection, we cease growth. We cease the growth of the social mind, of the scientific mind.
The collective engagement with the arts is the first step to creating reflective and introspective students who can think for themselves, and in the future, act for a better world. There is a difference between a student body that tents for 90-minute basketball games, and one that tents for Picasso’s “The Dream and Lie of Franco.” And while one isn’t necessarily better than the other, it would do us some good to instill in the student body a long and sustainable love for the arts. It is through art that we find meaning. In ourselves, in our time here, and beyond.
Shambhavi Sinha is a Trinity sophomore. Her pieces typically run on alternate Mondays.
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