Thursday before Spring Break is a critical day for the B.F.A.’s studying at AAP NYC. Thursdays in general are the most intensive day of the week, with our NYC Studio in the morning (9-1), followed by our NYC Professional Practice class in the afternoon (2-6). On this particular Thursday, our morning studio class, which is typically independent work time, was transformed into our significant mid-term critique, with guest critics Jane Benson and Linda Norden.
Critiques, or “crits,” are an essential and substantial part of AAP’s curriculum. They provide honest and valuable opinions on how an audience views and interprets an artist’s work. A mid-term crit like this one is structured quite simply; each artist receives an equal amount of critique time, and within that time, the first minutes the student presenting must be silent as the audience presents their first impression, unbiased to any information regarding the conceptual or material process. The artist is then brought into the dialogue, offering guiding statements to the group, and occasionally facilitating the conversation to points of particular interest. Valuable information is provided by both the visiting professors and the student’s peers, through effective questioning, evidence-based observations, and personal connotations. While crits can be daunting, they are very beneficial in search for new meaning, purpose, and future ideas; any lingering sense of contest is replaced by supportive mutual discovery.
Post-crit, we headed to the Oculus to jump on the PATH train, on our way to Mana Contemporary, a cultural center in Jersey City, New Jersey. Mana houses various services, spaces, and programming for artists, collectors, performers, dancers, curators, designers, and more. Founded by the moving company mogul Moishe Mana, its 1920’s-era one-million square foot building structure is home to one of the largest all-inclusive contemporary creative communities in the world. Under the guidance of Visiting Critic Linda Norden, we were fortunate enough to receive a private tour of Mana Contemporary; with no other tourists or guests in the building, world-class exhibits were empty enough for us to explore independently at our own pace, and we were frequently welcomed into arbitrary studios we wandered by. We toured Dan Flavin: cornered fluorescent light; Fred Sandback: Sculpture; Arnulf Rainer: Crosses and Angels; and Andy Warhol: The Original Silkscreens. We peered inside many studios, most notably ThreeAsFour (who we had seen in New York Fashion Week at the Guggenheim) and the studio of the late Walter De Maria.
At Cornell, and in AAP in particular, we tend to always be working; we see what some may consider their busiest weeks as our typical. The endless hours of internal conceptual problem solving, to physical time spent in studio working to prepare for crits add up. We in what is the busiest day of our week, it is often the most exciting, fulfilling, and fun.