Dear Whitney:


I am a parent of a student in Ms. F.'s third grade class, and I accompanied the class on its visit to the Edward Hopper exhibition today. I want to thank the museum for accommodating us and for giving the students the opportunity to see the work firsthand and in an uncrowded setting.

Edward Hopper, Barber Shop (1931)

I know that the Whitney has always placed great import on arts education and for that I am also grateful. Because I know the high value you place on education, I am moved to write to implore you to reevaluate some of your approaches. Today's guide was a sweet person who clearly valued her charges but also did them a bit of a disservice in her talk. 

On the first painting they looked at, my son mentioned that the bridge in it was the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the Queensborough Bridge. Rather than correct him, the guide praised him. This set the the tone for the talk. Her theme was that Hopper was intentionally ambiguous in his paintings to leave interpretation open to the viewer''s imagination. While mystery and ambiguity no doubt play a large part in Hopper's work, there are certain clues in his paintings that are incontrovertible. Allowing kids to miss those clues grossly undersells the work and underestimates the students.

Since my days as art critic, I have been teaching a good deal of art and English literature. I find that many students seem to deplore both. I believe that a lot of this loathing stems from students being taught that any interpretation is valid. Instead, it would be far more beneficial if students were taught that artists and writers often make choices for very specific reasons and that those choices suggest meanings that could take students beyond their own subjectivity [even eight year olds want to learn something more than the contours of their own minds].

After many years, the self esteem movement at large has taken a few steps back. It is time for it to do so in arts education as well. It is all right for children to lose occasionally and it's also all right for them to be told that the Queensborough Bridge is not the Brooklyn Bridge or that a painting called Barber Shop is not set in a science lab. Instead of leading the students to see that masterpiece as a character study of a manicurist in repose, a minor character idle in a busy barbershop elevated to heroic stature by her central placement in a shaft of brilliant light, our guide let the students go on about her being a painter, someone waiting for a haircut, etc...

Ugh.

Thanks for your time and efforts.