Scientific thinking and artisanal making are inextricably linked. ArtEZ University of the Arts recently adopted a protocol of substantive and financial support for employees who wish to obtain a doctoral degree. The Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences has had an Academy of Arts since 2014. The PhD regulations of some Dutch universities now make it possible to obtain a doctoral degree with artistic work. 86, 123 The separation between science and art, between thinking and doing, between fundamental research and creative application, which artists felt to be unnatural, is now being removed. (1) Borgdorff 2005 Van den Eijnde 2015, pp.

More than twenty years before Henk Bergdorff called for a Dutch faculty of the arts on behalf of art education, various academy directors argued that the arts were entitled to practice what they termed Pure Artistic Research, besides – what was then still called – Pure Scientific Research. However, unlike the educational developments abroad, Dutch art education has never become a university faculty. As early as the nineteen sixties and seventies – with the major reforms of the Education Act – art education felt affinity with both the fundamental research of universities and the practical training of crafts schools. It has never felt comfortable with an orientation towards artists as professionals with a regular profession.

A public statement of accountability, not only to my fellow professors, but also to the ArtEZ community, the professional field and society.Īrt education in the Netherlands occupies an unusual position in higher vocational education. I see it as an opportunity speak to a wider audience about the value of research at an art college in general, and of the new professorship for product design and interior architecture in particular. However, I hope that this speech is not regarded as a poor imitation of a university lecture. In higher vocational education it is slowly but surely becoming a tradition to dress up the appointment of professors – as with professors at a university – in the paraphernalia of a ritual initiation. Inaugural speech upon acceptance of the professorship Product Design & Interior Architecture, delivered in abridged form on 19 November 2016, ArtEZ University of the Arts

Ons creatieve brein by Dick Swaab