What is the point of an Art University?

This short article is the slightly amended text of a keynote talk presented at the Swedish Research Council’s symposium on Artistic Research ‘The Art University – political dream or broadened future for the arts’ in Malmö on 25 November 2015.

I want to highlight three areas relevant to the contemporary Art University in order to: identify some particular challenges that are shared by all universities in the UK and are relevant to universities across Europe; to indicate the contributions Art Universities make to society; and begin to outline why Art Universities can be a ‘great help out of our present difficulties’ to quote Matthew Arnold from 1869 (1).

These three areas are:
The regulatory frameworks that universities have to work within;
How Art Universities meet societal needs and challenges – the productive knowledge they generate;
Why Art Universities must value disinterested knowledge and critical distance.

(1) Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006), 5.

About the Artistic Research Yearbook 2016:

This year´s book, The Art University – political dream or broadened future for the arts, is the thirteenth edition of the Artistic Research Yearbook, and the first to be issued in English only.

The book opens with four articles on the theme of the academisation of artistic research and education, three of which are written by the keynote speakers at last year´s symposium of artistic research at the Inter Arts Center in Malmö. In the articles they examine the developments in the field from various angles, with a focus on the art university, largely based on experiences from the speakers´ respective home countries of Switzerland, the UK and Norway.

The fourth article considers the career paths for artistic researchers with a PhD in Sweden. Of the hundred or so holders of a PhD in the artistic field, 75 % are employed at higher education institutions in Sweden or abroad. In the absence of more detailed data, the authors believe it is likely that only a few of these have been able to continue in research after obtaining their doctorate. A more qualitative follow-up study is planned in the next Yearbook, which will highlight the scope of postdoctoral research at the relevant higher education institutions.

The next section presents reviews of two doctoral theses – one on choreography and one on literary composition. This is followed by five reports on artistic projects that have received funding from the Swedish Research Council, with comments from the Committee for Artistic Research.

(Source: https://publikationer.vr.se/en/product/artistic-research-yearbook-2016-the-art-university-political-dream-or-broadened-future-for-the-arts-3/)