Historical development

[Prepared as a section of a larger literature review,
(1999) Community Relationships and Arts Programs in Higher Education]

Morrison (1973) provides well documented discussion of the entry of each art form into American institutions of higher education. The following remarks are generally drawn from those reviews, except as otherwise noted.

In the early colleges, there was common practice of presenting plays or enacting scenes from the classics, though not without controversy. "The drama appeared in the forms of 'academical exercises,' extracurricular endeavor, and playwriting by faculty and students for commencements and 'dialogues'" (8). The Hasty Pudding Club emerged at Harvard by 1844, and extracurricular theatricals proliferated all over the country, as railroads established the touring practice of bringing commercial theatre to the country. Generally, George Pierce Baker is credited with establishing the first practical theatre course when he offered playwriting at Radcliffe College in 1903. It opened to Harvard students and included workshop productions in 1913 as the Radcliffe 47 Workshop. Baker moved to Yale in 1925 and founded the Drama School. In 1914 Thomas Wood Stevens instituted the first degree program in theatre at Carnegie Institute of Technology (Brockett, 1977). Programs eventually developed into departments or shared departments with speech or English, proliferating in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1967 there were 574 institutions offering degrees in theatre as a field of study, 20 of them for professional training. A search on college databases listed more than 700 institutions offering majors in drama or theatre arts in 1998 (Appendix A).

Dance or dancing was an aristocratic grace in the Colonies, though it was forbidden in some places, particularly after the Great Revival of 1858. Harvard licensed a dancing school in 1815, but it wasn't until later that dance began first to appear as exercise in private schools. Emma Willard introduced dance at Middlebury College and it became a part of several New England Female Seminaries. Margaret D'Houbler introduced dance, not as exercise, but as an art experience, at the University of Wisconsin in 1917, and a close relationship developed in the 1930s between New York professionals and Bennington College. These initiatives allowed development of a scholarship base for further academic development of the discipline, with 92 institutions offering credit for dance by 1948. Dance programs _ located in dance, theatre, fine arts, and physical education departments _ more than doubled between 1973 and 1985 (Prince, 1990). In 1998 there were more than 160 colleges and universities offering dance majors (Appendix A).

Film began to appear in appreciation courses in the 1920s. University of Southern California offered the first film major in 1932, with the largest growth beginning in the 1960s, from 10 undergraduate majors in 1959 to 47 schools offering film degrees in 1971. Although schools offering film or video production degrees remains about 48 in 1998, the number of film or cinema studies programs in all is more than 90 (Appendix A). The University Film Association was founded in 1947, the Society for Cinema Studies in 1959, and the American Film Institute in 1967. Former cost factors have been substantially mitigated by availability of prints on video tape and laser disc.

Creative or poetic writing has always been found among English courses, though it hasn't always been included in consideration of arts programs. There is greater recognition of its common concerns with visual and performing arts. Programs specifically for creative writing increased in the 1960s and 1970s, totaling over 130 in 1998 (Appendix A). In addition, there are many courses and workshops offered in creative writing, though not part of a creative writing major or concentration.

Music was part of the ancient quadrivium of the septem artes liberales, and has always been part of academic studies. Extracurricular performing ensembles and societies proliferated to be considered a normal part of college life by 1800. The first organized music instruction on the college level occurred with the establishment of the Boston Academy of Music, January 8, 1832 (Miller, 1993). Formal study was first offered at the normal school in Lexington, MA., in 1835, one year after vocal music was officially introduced in Boston public schools. Harvard offered lectures in 1862 and Vassar by 1867. Conservatories developed from 1859, with the Oberlin Conservatory in 1865 ,and the New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Cincinnati Conservatory, and Chicago Musical College, all in 1867. Music was accepted as a discipline by colleges and universities everywhere by 1915. Uneven standards among programs and conservatories led to development of the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) in 1927. In 1970 there were 1300 colleges, universities, conservatories, schools of music, and community colleges in the United States and Canada. In 1998 music majors at two- and four-year colleges alone number about 900 in America (Appendix A).

In the visual arts, the first successful academy, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine arts, opened in 1807, followed a year later by the New York Academy. In 1825, a group of dissident students broke from the New York Academy to form the Society for the Improvement of Drawing, which became the National Academy of Design in 1826. The Maryland Institute was founded in 1826, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1866, the Massachusetts College of Art as a normal school in 1873, the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1876, and several more in the 1880s. The earliest schools did not provide training for application of arts to industry _ which was later undertaken by such institutions as Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and Rhode Island School of Design (Efland, 1990). Massachusetts College of Art was established largely to prepare teachers following the passage of the Massachusetts Free Instruction in Drawing Act of 1870, requiring all public school students to have drawing instruction. The act was provoked by a letter from fourteen industrialists who wanted American draftsmen in their textile mills (Smith, 1996).

Harvard, Yale, and Princeton followed three different routes for art instruction, beginning in 1874. "Harvard attempted to combine the practice of art with art history. Yale, by contrast, emphasized studio studies, while Princeton focused on art history. Other universities adopted the patterns of art instruction first developed at these three schools" (Efland, 1990, p. 68). By 1900, there were 47 colleges and universities offering some form of courses in fine art. Yale was unique in providing a curriculum essentially identical with professional art schools. Chicago Art Institute led other independent schools and academies in seeking accreditation in the 1930s, which validated working artists in the classroom. In 1970 there were about 680 schools offering majors in visual art; by 1998 that number was over 800 and possibly 1000 (Appendix A).

Arts programs entered the academy, each by its own door. Degree programs in music and visual art flowered in the late 19th century, along with developing extracurricular theatre. In the 1930s dance and film entered the curriculum, and creative writing programs began to develop. All were poised for full development in the explosion of higher education in the 1960s, coinciding with dramatic growth of the art forms themselves in the larger culture. In commenting on the historical resistance of "early Protestant ethics and the depersonalization of the industrial-technological revolution," Morrison notes that art programs have succeeded where a strong personality would "carve out a niche for himself" by offering a course, and it would be protected and encouraged by leadership, frequently the president of the university (158). Often the first resistance is from the general faculty, perceiving arts programs as a "threat to the status quo and a drain on funds and attention in the eyes of this group, most of whom have been raised on a diet of discursive symbols in their professional lives. With Plato, they simply reject the artist as a serious member of their company" (158). Regardless, by 1998 the number of two- and four-year colleges and universities offering majors in various visual and performing arts exceeded 1200, or more than a third of all 3500 post-secondary colleges, universities, specialized institutions, corporate colleges and trade schools (Appendix A).

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