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artists and critics changed in the public interest or not? How can or should an artist of color get into the "system"?

Relyea: The system that Greenberg once ruled over certainly did not serve the public interest well - it was a system of objects (mostly paintings, some sculptures), it was full of material property and was very elitist. Today's art system, like everything else, now privileges not so much objects as information. What counts is being in the know; what matters is not so much the object in front of you as the name of the artist who made it, what part of the art world that person inhabits, what's her or his position within that field, what strategies and terms define that field, etc. Education, as much as anything else, carves out today's distinctions between haves and have-nots. The experience of art is more and more touristic, superficial: audiences learn just enough of a certain art "language" to be able to claim value from their experiences in museums - and their need for that value, that cultural capital, stems more and more from rising competition within the sphere of culture and education. Or rather, social competition is increasingly expressed through culture. You succeed in life, you get the promotion and the mortgage on the house in the nice neighborhood, etc., the more you can exploit cultural capital. Walk into a Restoration Hardware store - if you've taken an art history course you can better "appreciate" the "value-added" features that make their toothbrush holders ridiculously expensive. This is now effecting how K-mart and Target market their products. Even Dunkin Donuts has to sell cappuccino now.

So while education has empowered more people to experience and enjoy art today, I still think the public interest is far from being well served. Education is more and more subservient to market demands and corporate needs. And everyone is painfully aware of how intimately it's linked to the perpetuation of class hierarchies. What would help is more politicizing of education, especially higher education. The academy still hides behind an image of idealistic pursuit of innocence, neutral knowledge, and this has to be confronted. For example, while identity politics and multiculturalism have receded from the art world spotlight over the last ten years, the recruiting of minority faculty and students is still an issue in university art programs, and should be made more of an issue. The effect had by someone like Kerry James Marshall here in Chicago, or Charles Gaines at Cal Arts in L.A., is immense - not just in their roles as artists but as teachers.

Luckily for us, local art history departments have also been hiring African-American scholars who specialize in contemporary art, like Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson at Northwestern and Darby English at University of Chicago. One way to get more art and artists of color into the system is to graduate and tenure more artists and art historians of color. Changes in art and its discourse will follow.

Learn more about this author, Nathaniel Mclin.
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