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“PNCA Flying”

Inaugural Remarks of Dr. Thomas Manley

May 7, 2004
Portland, Oregon

Greetings and Introduction

Chairman Hampton, Members of the Board of Governors, Search and Inauguration Committee Chair Tom Deering, President Bragdon and President Emerita Lawerence, past and current faculty, staff, alumni and students, distinguished delegates and guests, colleagues, friends and family, and, especially my mother Elaine and her husband John, who could not be here and to whom I dedicate these remarks.

It feels very good to be official! Thank you for being here. I am happy for this day and not least for the good company it brings to our College.

Occasions like today’s are rare opportunities to take stock; from the vantage point of the present to look back over time and marvel at what has been done and then turn to the horizon looking as far forward as one might, to site new landmarks, and set new directions. And such occasions allow us to do these things in a public way, among our friends and colleagues and in the big tent, no less. (Now doesn’t that conjure up images? Children running away to the circus or better, children running away to art school; or an old fashioned revival, I like that even more).

This has been a year of discovery for me, a year filled with surprise, admiration and appreciation and it has been a year guided by many questions. There is a Muslim proverb that tells us that only half of knowledge is to be found in the answer, while the other half resides in the question.

Questions. Isn’t it wondrous that in this age of smart cards, smart classrooms, and super smart computers, that the question is still one of the most powerful teaching and planning tools we possess? I believe, our ability to understand PNCA, its past, its future, and especially the role it will play in shaping our visual arts culture, and why the arts are essential in our lives and our world, depends on what questions we use to frame and guide our thinking.

One of the questions I have posed early and often this year is as follows: Given that artists reinvent what art is for their time, what is the role of an art school in supporting them in that reinvention?

This is the question among others that directs today’s symposium, Re: inventing art and design education: values, responsibilities and creative practice. I hope you can stay to listen to our distinguished panel whose members come from all over the country to contribute their ideas to an ongoing conversation here at PNCA. It is a question that was initially inspired by a conversation with Dorothy Ginsburg Lemelson, who has truly made the question open ended by generously sponsoring today’s symposium to help us deepen our thinking even further. Thank you, Dolly, we are all indebted to you.

This morning, I want to share with you some of what I have learned about this remarkable Portland institution, Pacific Northwest College of Art, and why I am excited about its prospects as we prepare to celebrate its 100th birthday in just five short years.

The Value of the Visual Arts and the Importance of Fine Art and Design Education

First, let me say just a bit about the educational value of the visual arts and what keeps them vital. For many of you this may be known gospel, if that’s the case, in keeping with our big tent revival theme, please treat my comments as testimonial.

“I want to open eyes.” That’s what the painter Josef Albers once said of his work, and, of course, he meant eyes that were already open, but not seeing. The visual arts teach us to see and think about the world differently. They suggest new possibilities. The visual arts re-awaken us to the particulars of the world. They draw the mind and the eye cognitively and emotionally to a heightened point of focus. Neither generalization nor general study can teach this alertness.

Through the eyes and imaginations of artists and designers we see ourselves and the many faces we wear, we hear our voices and the voices of others. The world is large and full of color and noise, the visual arts captures these for us, in miniature and grand scale, in a world richly complex and full of contradictions and competing truths.

The tools visual artists employ most effectively are detached observation, the passionate and compassionate heart, and the workings of a deeply inquiring mind. I believe it is imperative that we bring more fully into play the tools of knowledge and understanding that the arts have inspired. Centers of art and design education have an instrumental role to play in making that happen. And in the case of PNCA it has been happening for nearly a century.

PNCA as the Hearth-fire of the Visual Arts

PNCA is and has been the hearth-fire for the visual arts in our region since Anna Crocker and Harry Wentz founded it 95 years ago as the School of the Portland Art Association. The same Portland Art Association whose visionary members founded the Portland Art Museum in the 1890’s, a group that had come together over a common love of drawing.

The city and the school have changed enormously in the past century, but the seminal vision of PNCA’s founders has had a formative impact on shaping the cultural landscape of our community and the lives of its citizens. Through the work and the efforts of the artists and scholars brought to the school to teach, mentor and make art, the region was given a living treasure: an institution dedicated to educating generations of young artists and to creating a wider and better informed audience for their work.

In an Oregonian article that appeared shortly after I arrived, DK Row profiled 10 Northwest artists whose impact he argued had been visionary and widely felt. Eight out of 10 of the artists he mentioned were faculty or students or both of the art college, PNCA. Let me read their names (in alphabetical order of course): Jay Backstrand, Manuel Izquierdo, George Johansen, Mel Katz, Lee Kelly, Jack McClarty, Henk Pander, Michele Russo, and Harry Widman. Some of those artists are here this morning as are many others who have made important contributions. I would ask you to join me in acknowledge their gifts to us.

I dare say, there is not a person under our big top who has not benefited from the forward-looking vision of our College. Consider for a second the impact of just the Children’s program, which has been running longer than any of its kind in the country. How many lives has it touched? How many of you or your neighbors or children or your parents or teachers were enriched by the creative experiences that program made possible? Let me cite just two cases: Bruce Guenther, the curator of contemporary art of the Portland Art Museum and artist Lennie Pitkin, who now oversees our wonderful continuing education program. Both got their start in the Children’s program!

Each successive generation of the college’s students, faculty, alumni, staff, board and friends have added to the treasure that is PNCA. And their care and tutelage and the quality of the program they developed has formed the foundation for our continuing work of preparing the current student body to take flight, in their own way, on their own course, each drawing, as Walt Whitman said, their own maps as they go.

As we look ahead to this century, we know the world is very different and the questions we ask for the College now must respond to those differences.

Over the course of the year I have worked together with the PNCA community to formulate a shared vision for the College, one that will take us to our centennial in 2009. Here, I offer some highlights and associated initiatives that we will undertake to achieve that vision.

As PNCA takes off, as it takes flight, we see a college that has stepped confidently and more prominently into the world of art and design education. And In looking to the future we are committed to increasing the number of full-time faculty appointments by one-third; we are committed to doubling our financial aid and other scholarship packages for students, and providing competitive compensation, benefits and development opportunities to reward and retain those faculty and staff who contribute in such important ways to the College and the education of our students.

In looking to the future we will actively chart new curricular directions. The faculty will further strengthen the College through the creation of innovative programs, both graduate and undergraduate, new majors and new resource centers and technologies that will best serve our students and their educational needs. In this spirit I am please to announce today the dedication of the Sally Lawrence endowed fund to support faculty development.

In looking to the future we will build on the accomplishments, which brought us here to the Pearl, by securing the College’s permanent home that will include student residences. We are grateful to all those who have supported us in that historic move.

In actively making this future, I believe that organizational collaboration can no longer be an after thought, but must be a matter of institutional will. Through an alliance with other art organizations, our college can accomplish far more than it might on its own.

It is our obligation and our great opportunity to take a leadership role in building collaboration. My goal is to help foster a consortium of visual arts organizations that will provide a common platform for cooperative programs, which will among other things bring the most exciting artists and thinkers from around the world here to Oregon teach our students and to work with us and as our faculty. I am pleased to tell you that we have already begun discussions with our colleague organizations and a planning summit for this new endeavor under the working title — the Portland art resources consortium or PARC — will be held on June 28th. All the organizations thus far contacted have been very receptive and Mayor Vera Katz and Commissioner Eric Stenn have agreed to attend our initial session.

Finally, in looking to the future we see a college that embraces the world openly, celebrating the diversity of cultural voices and visions and working resolutely to represent them in its own curriculum and community.

I have spoken of the value of the visual arts in moving us to a more nuanced appreciation of the world, its shadings in meaning, emotion, and culture. If I may be allowed to comment on the present predicaments we face across the planet — and especially in the Middle East, it seems to me that precisely what is missing from our thinking is the ability to appreciate that differences in and of themselves are not bad; that truth (small t) and beauty (small b) reside in the folds of complexity and ambiguity and that there may be as many versions of these things as humans to perceive them. We cannot prepare our students to effectively and happily live in a world they know little about or worse, are in fear of because of our inherited prejudices. What is the educational antidote?

Having spent the better part of my time as an educator developing study programs that placed college students in cross-cultural settings, I believe there is no more powerful agent for educational growth and personal transformation than these experiences.

Given the College’s educational objectives, it is a priority for us to expand international/intercultural-learning opportunities for our students and also for our faculty and staff. We will do this both by increasing the number of study abroad offerings, by increasing direct exchange programs between the College and sister institutions worldwide, and by developing a small number of our own programs and travel opportunities abroad and in culturally different communities at home. We will also be establishing more inbound programs to increase the number of international students, scholars and artists at the College. Our eventual goal will be to provide cross-cultural learning experiences for every PNCA student who might benefit.

To help us in this direction we have established the Rieger Prize to support annually an enterprising PNCA student to undertake a cross-cultural journey that carries her or him to a new place in terms of their work and their perception of the world. This gift is made possible by a generous bequest to the College from the late Professor Charles Rieger. I wish to recognize and thank his daughter Christine DeKalbermatten Newton who is here with us this morning for her assistance in making the prize a reality.

I would also like to acknowledge the presence of Professor Iso Wagner, our colleage and the Rektorin of the Fachhochschule Schwaebisch Hall, an art college and PNCA exchange partner in Germany. She has come a long way.

As the College seeks to engage the world more broadly we will benefit from the advice of those whose own experience has given them knowledge and perspectives that can assist us in our strategic endeavors. Consequently, the Board of Governors has created a new advisory council to the College that will be international in its scope. I am greatly pleased to announce that Harriet Fulbright, widow of the late Senator William Fulbright, and one of the world’s foremost advocates of international exchange, has agreed to become the founding chair of this new council. Mrs. Fulbright will be joined by Dorothy Ginsburg Lemelson, Chairman of the Lemelson Foundation, Brad Cloepfil, principal of Allied Works Architecture, Barry Sanders, a twice nominated Pulitzer prize author and scholar, Kristy Edmunds, Executive Director of PICA and Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, and artist Christopher Rauschenberg. Please join me in welcoming and thanking these founding members of the council.

Concluding Remarks

Over the course of this year, I have been asked many times how I came to be here, at an art school, when I myself am not an artist and have not spent my time in art-centered institutions. Well, I think myself fortunate.

This is a dream job for me because it combines two of my greatest passions: art and education. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with the arts; and for the last twenty-five years I have been engaged almost daily in trying to better understand and improve how learning happens at the post secondary level.

For me, then, being at a college where art is at the center of the educational universe is a joy. There is energy about this place that lifts the imagination and revitalizes the spirit. It fills the corridors and galleries, classrooms and laboratories. You can find it in the amazing and, frequently, provocative work featured in our Feldman Gallery, currently exhibiting work of PNCA alumna and Parsons faculty member, Esther Podemski). You find it the BFA juried show, or in the work of our third-year students now on display in the Swiggert Commons. But even moving out of the main hall and galleries, you can just as easily find strong, fresh currents of learning eddying through the school; you find them in the colorful and clever bank notes produced for a class assignment in design; or in a personal investigation of the idea of friendship captured in a dozen exquisite, postage sized photographs mounted along a wall outside of an administrative office. What a wonderful cure for the humdrum of bureaucracy. How could I not write a more inspired appeal for scholarship funds with such lively evidence of what our students and faculty achieve all around?

I have long believed in the transformative power of education, but I now believe firmly that the visual arts offers a critical counterweight to tip us, with grace, away from the insanity of intolerance that threatens us all. “There is another world,” wrote the French poet Paul Eluard, “and it is this one.”

So again a question: Can a small college of art and design make a difference in the world? Of course, it can. It already has and in myriad and wonderful ways. And whatever your relationship is to PNCA today, we ask you to find your best way to make its flights soar far into a future of amazing possibility.

Thank you all for celebrating with me. I am honored by your presence and even more so by the trust that has been given to me to speak on behalf of this extraordinary enterprise that has become PNCA and the remarkable community of creative individuals — all of you — who will continue to make it fly.

Let’s aim High!

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