Laura and I worked collaboratively for this project to get a feel for how people within the Duke community see art on campus, the university's receptiveness to art, and where they think art should be better represented. Responses varied, but the overall responses we recieved were in favor of more student art, installations, public art, etc. It seemed obvious from our interviews that students' perceptions of Duke are that it is a university campus severely lacking in innovative and thought-provoking artwork.
Gina: Duke is not particularly known as an artistically liberal, creative, art-embracing campus, and unfortunately, some of these external stereotypes actually hold true. Although certain areas of campus are decorated with student-created advertisements, poltical beliefs, or random blurbs of graffiti (namely, the bridge to east campus), Duke's public artwork predominately remains the austere, memorial-type statuary or portraiture. As Babs so eloquently stated in her interview, this campus is in desperate need to art that can shock, inspire, or simply to make campus a more visually-stimulating, artistic environment.
Laura: I actually was not shocked by the student response in our interviews. Art is not a very prevalent element on the Duke Unversity campus. I feel like Duke ought to make more of an effort to showcase student art -- especially in more public areas such as the main quad, bryan center, east campus student union, and even the libraries. Art is a way to broaden minds and has various uses: breaking down social conventions, asking unanswered questions, etc. I hope that we, as students and members of the Duke community, can act upon this.
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