[Burcak]

If I was to be a painting teacher at university level, I would definitely change the curriculum I was taught. I personally felt the pressure of being a woman in a Fine Arts Academy where the majority of the professors were male and mostly supporting male students. Constantly studying artworks from white male western artists seemed normal at that time, no one knew better sadly. We were always told that women artists were not known that much in that time. Therefore, for my curriculum, I would integrate woman artists as much as male artists to study their artworks. I would also include multiculturality in that too. Moreover, as I was struggling with the discipline-based education, I would definitely put interdisciplinarity into the center of my curriculum. I would also integrate new media tools into the curricula as well.

[Burcak]

I think that studio art needs to integrate new media tools into its curricula to be more interdisciplinary. It also needs to have more multiculturalism for sure, studying artworks of mostly western artists creates a narrow perception on studio art. For example, why not integrating African art as the main resource for a studio course?

[Burcak]

My opinion of studio art in general is at the university level. I immediately think of my own studio art experience in my BA, in which the art education was highly discipline-based. I studied at the painting department, and it might be somewhat natural that the education was discipline-based. However, there were almost no interactions between the other departments, and the professors were concerned with paintings to look “graphical”, which was a major no-no for the department. I experienced in my MA that students were much freer in terms of artistic forms and interdisciplinarity. However, even though it seems like a freer environment, there is still the concern in succeeding in one discipline. The professors usually read interdisciplinarity as “confusion” or “distraction” in MFA shows.

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