Learning by Example

By Ruth Melville

Since its inception 67 years ago, the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art has presented a series of artists’ lectures as an integral component of its program.

For the past years 17 years, the art school, which is based in the Art Barn on the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate, has been under the direction of Sam Messer, a painter and professor and associate dean at the Yale University School of Art. The program has four full-time faculty members, who cover four disciplines: photography, painting, drawing and printmaking. Visiting artists and lecturers throughout the session are chosen to supplement this core faculty. This year 11 artists and critics, including Messer himself, presented lectures and slide shows to the students.

In planning the year’s talks, Messer tries to get a range of speakers. In part, he’s trying to fill in gaps, to offer students an introduction to styles and practices that the resident faculty might not cover. Since the students are undergraduates, they are still discovering the possibilities the art world has to offer. Messer notes that they are sometimes surprised by what they hear. They can end up liking things they didn’t think they would, or, alternatively, they can find validation for their own ideas in the work of an established artist.

Messer finds artists to be very generous with their time. “Artists want to be a part of this program,” he says. “Besides, that’s what artists do, they help each other out.” Because the audience is mostly made up of young students, the visitors are often willing to show work, perhaps from early in their careers, that they would not normally exhibit to museums or collectors.

Messer also tries to include some alumni from the Yale summer program. The message to students is, you can do this; we sat there in the audience when we were students, and we’ve gone on to make a life in art. In many ways, as Messer points out, art is a trade. You have to learn how to be an artist.

Not all the lecturers are artists. Critics and writers are also invited. Robert Storr, a curator, critic and academic, has spoken at Norfolk, as has the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. This year, Susan Cahan, who is an art historian and dean of the arts at Yale College, spoke about her recent book, “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power,” in which she describes the efforts of African American artists in the late 1960s to integrate New York City’s art museums.

A few examples of this year’s speakers give an idea of the variety of voices that Messer prizes.

Yamini Nayar, one of the visiting artists this summer, builds architectural sculptures from found and raw materials. After she has photographed the sculptures with a large-format camera, she destroys them. The photograph that remains is the work of art.

The installation artist Judy Pfaff was a student at Norfolk in 1970. She has gone on to become a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, and a professor of art at Bard College. Pfaff is an engaging, warm and funny speaker, and in the lively question and answer period after her talk she told the audience that she believed that “being an artist should be fun.”

A student at the Yale Summer Program in 1985, Patricia Cronin is a conceptual visual artist who addresses issues of gender and sexuality in her work. During her residency here, she studied with Michaela Murphy, who herself met with students in the Art Barn the day before Cronin’s lecture.

Every year Messer presents a slide-show lecture on his career. A highlight of his talk this year was the first public showing of his short animated film “Denis the Pirate,” with text by his friend the novelist Denis Johnson. The film will be shown in October 2017, with some additional material and live musicians, at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford.

The lectures, which are held in Battell House, are always free and open to the public. The 2016 summer program ends at the beginning of July, but next year you can find out information about the lecture series on the program’s website, norfolkart.yale.edu, and you can ask to be put on the emailing list to receive notice of events.

Photo by Bruce Frisch: Patricia Cronin answers questions from the audience after her lecture to the Yale art students on June 16.