Senior Thesis Exhibitions @ Corcoran Gallery of Art
One of only three art schools in the nation that are affiliated with a world-class museum, the Corcoran College of Art + Design is a powerhouse in the "art schools of America" roster, ranking high in the Princeton Review (but receiving a ‘C’ average among current pupils and alumni). Founded in 1890, the school is the District’s only four-year, fully-accredited college of art and design. The Corcoran Gallery of Art has finally dedicated a gallery to its educational sibling in an overdue gesture of commitment to the art school. The smallish gallery sits somewhat camouflaged behind a door marked "Auditorium" and if you are not too familiar with the layout of the galleries or the school, you might miss it. Although they most likely will have to answer to the museum’s chief curators and board of trustees, the students and faculty will govern the contents presented inside Gallery 31, as it was uninterestingly tagged by Corcoran students because of its 31st position on the original gallery's floor plan.
As an inauguration of the newly bestowed space, nothing is more fitting than a Senior Thesis Exhibition where students will complete the final requirement for their degrees and flaunt just exactly what those $97,156 BFAs have bought them. This series has been inching toward its finale since February; presented incrementally by major, beginning with Photojournalism and working through Fine Art Photography, Fine Arts, and Graphic & Digital Media Design. The exhibitions have been changing weekly, with a new group of students installing their work each Tuesday.
For the roughly twenty-two Digital Media Design and Graphic Design students, the senior exhibition project was obviously a strenuous process. Students began by choosing their topics, all of which are devoted to modernism to accompany Modernism: Designing a New World (on view in the main museum). They then set out to conduct appropriate research and develop a compelling thesis. The projects had only two prerequisites -- they must include an interview with another, more seasoned design professional and they must harvest a final publication to bear the fruit of their research papers. Many (almost half) of the seniors chose to "publish" their work using video format, which was supposedly running on loop on LCD screens in the back of the gallery. But on Sunday, May 6th, the videos were neither running nor audible. Unfortunate, too, because many of the bound publications were so well done it would have been great to see the contrast in media.
Jason Lavinder’s The Evolution of Newspaper Design: Exploring Layout and Design from Yesterday’s News to Today’s Top Story illustrates everything that’s fit to print about the charming and age-old culture of information sharing in the dailies. He works through the painstaking art of ancient typefaces, long before the ease of desktop publishers, the introduction of margin-to-margin images on the front page, modern weather mapping, and the presence of advertisements in the news and in tabloids. His project lay there elegant and encased in an intelligent blue polybag, replicating the size and appearance of a $1.50 Sunday paper. But this assembling of undergraduate hard work, attractiveness, and smart perspective is so sharp that it should never be discarded on the Metro or carelessly chucked by the paperboy.
Minimalism/Maximalism: cultural origins of a typographic dichotomy, researched, written, edited, and designed by Leslie Badani, is a pretty publication on a platter. Her project takes pastel baby steps through a continuing saga of function and simplicity versus personal expression and individuality; design’s transition from "We" to "Me." Working through minimalism, through new wave, and through deconstructivism, Badani does a thorough job representing and dissecting many of the most recognizable movements in design history. Her analysis of the tense design period during the late 1980s -- when everything seemed to resemble a piecemeal ransom note or a decade-late version of the "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" album cover -- chips away at how graphic design more often than not becomes cliché. At the back of her sleek publication is a fascinating interview with Maria Francheska Guerrero, a Corcoran assistant professor and the design director of Conversant Studios, during which the two discuss the path of young designers beginning their careers, technology’s colossal impact on accessible design, and corporate culture’s inevitable rape of underground design ideologies. Badani, whose design was chosen to announce the Senior Thesis Exhibition series, is definitely one graduate we will see again.
Don’t miss the pinnacle of the series – the All Senior Exhibition on view May 16–27. It’s bound to be a spectacle of well-taught and promising artists on the rise. But as Oscar Wilde said in The Critic as Artist, which he wrote around the same time the Corcoran was founded, "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught." Time will tell what these budding artists produce outside of the classroom.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is located at 500 17th Street NW; see their web site for hours and ticket prices. The Senior Thesis Exhibition runs until May 27.