LIFE AFTER VES

For anyone considering a career in the arts, it’s difficult to escape the fear of becoming an archetypal starving artist. Imagine living like the characters in “La Bohème,” in an unheated garrett, always behind on the rent. Investment bankers don’t have to go through those trials and tribulations, do they?

Compared to the sciences or humanities, where Harvard’s ability to lay foundations for future success is relatively unquestioned, there are persistent doubts about the relevance or future value of a Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) education. A Crimson editorial, written two years ago by Andrew L. Kreicher ’06, denounced VES as “a concentration so unnecessary, ridiculous, and over-dramatized that it’s hard to mention it anymore without a snicker on your face...VES should be an area of elective classes or a citation program, but not a concentration awarding the same diplomas as other majors.”

But despite such contemptuous attitudes towards the department, the content of VES courses and the skills that VES students develop may well prepare concentrators for life outside of Harvard—perhaps even more so than other fields of study.

Indeed, if the stories of some of VES’s most successful graduates and the words of its teachers are to be taken as evidence, the specific creative skills an undergraduate develops in VES can often be directly applied to a career after graduation. With VES producing graduates in everything from documentary filmmaking to executive management, it seems that a focus on the physical application of technique and the opportunity to independently discover personal talent make VES surprisingly close to a pre-professional concentration.

LEGITIMATION

“More than a lot of humanities concentrations, you can go get a job doing [what you did in VES] when you get out of here,” says VES professor John D. Connor ’92, a film scholar and the director of undergraduate film studies. “It’s closer to being a pre-professional field than being a historian of 19th century American history.

“Take a class in design, become a graphic designer; make movies, become a cinematographer,” he says. “There’s the chance to do a lot of that here. You won’t be an older version of the artist, but you’re going to be in the arts.”

Despite Connor’s optimism, some current students remain skeptical about the department.

“I do sense that people feel it’s not a legitimate concentration,” says Yuna C. Han ’10, when asked what she thinks about the department.

But an official pronouncement may help in changing that perception.

Last week, Harvard University President Drew G. Faust announced the creation of a “task force on the arts,” designed to ensure that arts education—as part of a broader liberal arts education—has a significant place here at Harvard. In doing so, she addressed the kind of skepticism Han speaks of.

“Harvard has always had enormous strengths in the arts—and never more so than today—but we have had equally strong ambivalence about the role of performance and practice in the curriculum and in the life of the University,” Faust wrote in a campus-wide announcement.

But such legitimation of “the arts” may not even be necessary. For some individuals most closely acquainted with VES, the concentration is not simply about artistic creation.

“The faculty did not want an arts department,” says VES professor John R. Stilgoe. “The primary focus of the department is visual, but environmental means everything people construct from clothing to cosmetics to a large landscape.”

IN THE STUDY OR THE STUDIO

Founded in 1968, VES is “the curricular home of studio arts, photography, filmmaking, film studies, environmental studies, video art and performance, and critical theory,” according to its description in the FAS student handbook. The concentration includes both academic study and studio courses ass part of its requirements.

At its core, the concentration combines a wide range of artistic fields, including more traditional versions of art, like painting or sculpting, but also other forms, such as design and animation.

In fact, according to Stilgoe, “very few” VES grads become professional artists, “because you can’t get the training at a liberal arts college that you would at an arts college.”

However, VES has three tracks from which concentrators choose—studio and film, environmental studies, and film studies—and students do receive the training and skills that allow them to pursue careers in fields that are not strictly artistic.

“A big chunk of VES these days is not studio art or even film production,” says Connor. “The environmental study wing, though it’s not very large at the moment, is more like a pre-architecture major. VES teaches how to think about space and place and design of places and reconfiguration of natural space over time and all the things that architects need to know besides how to build a wall and how to measure this and that. That captures some of the very possibly pre-professional attitude of the concentration.”

VES lecturer and director of undergraduate studies Robb Moss echoes that sentiment. “I don’t think success is related to whether or students go on into the arts,” he says. “We don’t measure our success by the number of students who go on to make artwork.”

Yet, even if Moss doesn’t measure by the numbers, numerous VES concentrators have nonetheless remained visible in both mainstream and more independent art venues.

DIFFERENT PATHS

Katherine J. Davis ’82, who has directed and produced a number of critically acclaimed documentaries and films for television—including a segment in last year’s HBO series, “Addiction”—came to Harvard with an interest in painting and studio art.

Only in her senior year did she enroll in Ross McElwee’s introductory course in film making, discovering a love for the psychological and drawmatic elements of the art.

“Film making, in particular, helped synthesize my other courses,” she says. “It was helping to understand other people. Other things seemed very separate and very cerebral, separate from the real world. I took other very interesting intellectual courses, but with filmmaking, in the end, beyond the technique of film, what’s exciting to me is being immersed in the streets and being exposed to different walks of life.”

Davis says she struggled with financial difficulty at the beginning of her career.

She was forced to work with little money and no idea of how her films would be received. “That’s true if you want to go into the arts,” she says. “It doesn’t mean there isn’t a potential for a well-paid and creative job. I think you have to be willing to go through some years of being very unsure.”

Despite initial struggles with economic success, many VES graduates have become extremely successful in their fields.

Andrew J. Bujalski ’98, who still remembers when he used to disappear into the basement of Sever film lab, has directed two feature films since leaving Harvard. His first, “Funny Ha Ha” (2005), which was hailed as “one of the top 10 films of the year” by the Boston Phoenix, earned him the “Someone to Watch” Award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Bujalski has a different perspective on VES’s place at Harvard. “I felt a little under the radar from the Harvard community at large,” he says. “But I found great freedom in that.”

The VES department has produced its fair share of successful filmmakers from previous generations, as well.

Richard L. Rosenthal ’71, one of the earliest concentrators, directed the eighth sequel to the original slasher movie “Halloween,” “Halloween: Resurrection,” and is currently working on an independent film, “GRETA,” starring Hillary Duff and Ellen Burstyn.

Reginald A. Hudlin ’83 is the President of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and is currently writing the script for the Marvel Comics’ “Black Panther.”

Choosing to take a different route from these predecessors, VES concentrator Anna F. Ludwig ’04 decided to work in a law firm immediately following graduation, partly for economic reasons.

She says that, about a year ago, she realized she needed time to work on her painting, and now spends three 10-hour days at the firm, dedicating the rest of the time to her art. She is planning to return to graduate school for a Masters of Fine Arts in painting.

“VES made me look at Harvard in a different way—going to my studio to paint while other people were holed up in their rooms writing papers and problem sets,” Ludwig says. “I did those things too, but definitely the VES department challenged me to think about the kind of stuff that I was making, and see different materials and ways of making art. It opened my eyes to see what kinds of things art could be.”

“I think it was a great program and the professors were fairly honest with people,” she continues. “There wasn’t too much hand-holding, none of the, ‘Of course you’ll be able to have an easy career as an artist.’ They were honest with us, and let us know, ‘If you want to do this you have to really want it and enough to sacrifice other things.’”

TEACHING YOU TO TEACH YOURSELF

For James F. Collins ’07, currently filming a documentary in South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, the experience of being a VES concentrator was similarly eye-opening. A lifelong involvement with music and interest in photography paved the road for filmmaking. Collins says he learned all of his necessary skills and technique during his time in VES.

“It was great to have the freedom to figure some things out for myself,” he says in an e-mail from South Africa. “Whereas other courses may simply teach you the material, I found that VES courses often teach you to teach yourself. And that’s a great thing, because having someone breathing down your back telling you exactly how to take a photograph would not be very conducive to creativity.”

“I think the idea that there is no security for VES concentrators after college is totally bogus,” he continues. “I know plenty of VES graduates who are doing amazing things with their lives and ‘security’ is not an issue for them. I, myself, feel very secure and confident with what I can do in life and how I can use my VES education to get me there.”