The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and Why This Still Feels so Dang Hard

Old Writing, Young Students, and Jeff Morin’s Tax Bracket

Yikes. Hi everyone. Can you give me two seconds? Sorry, I just need to gather my thoughts. I found my old blog which, it turns out, still exists in the cluttered basement of the internet. I read a few lines and it’s really, well, it’s a lot.

I just need another second to collect myself. While you wait, feel free to look at this arty photo I took last week:

Curb couches clutter my whole neighborhood in summer, as apartments pass from older college students to younger ones. This flagrant dumping is as beautiful and mysterious to me as the swallows’ yearly return to Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. The blog isn’t terrible, to be honest. It’s just--imagine digging up an old photo of yourself from nine years ago. Except the photo can talk. And it has a lot to say. You feel sort of repulsed by it, but at the same time, protective. Maybe protective repulsion is a healthy way to feel about your past self.

Do you mind looking at it? The writing, I mean. I could use some feedback.

There’s one post in particular, from 2014, with a punchy, please-look-at-me title that I’m not going to share here. It’s from a time when I began paragraphs with perhaps, and tied them together with pithy phrases like the sad truth. Try to go easy on me. I’d just graduated from MIAD and was feeling a little overwhelmed as I dipped my toe into a (still ongoing) career in the exciting world of three-cent-a-word web copy.

The pay is a bit higher now, but still pretty dismal, $4500 per course. And that’s quoted from a source who A) has taught there on and off for many years and B) is very well respected in the art world. The starting pay is lower.

There’s a lot that bugs me about this piece--the condescending tone, the misplaced apostrophe in the third line, the unnecessarily confusing math. It’s too eager to prove its point. It tries to win your trust by sounding like a news anchor, which is disappointing because the writing had come from a very honest place. As a freshly-minted BFA, I felt cheated. I felt lost and a little scared. I guess I didn’t believe enough in my own feelings to just come out and say how I felt.

You know, thinking about it now, I still feel cheated, a little. Be honest with me here--Do you think it’s fair to say art schools are predatory? I mean, I enjoyed art school. I got a lot out of it. But it’s hard for me to imagine any business model that relies on 18-year-olds going deeply into debt as anything other than predatory. Am I off base here?

I suppose it’s fair to acknowledge that MIAD, like all top accredited art schools, is a nonprofit. It exists to benefit the public. The idea of nonprofits, to my understanding, is to aggregate public resources to serve a population or cause that could use those resources. MIAD does a good job of that. It provides financial aid to all its students. It has a relatively good track record for diversity. More than half its students are first-generation college-goers. I was a first-generation college-goer. In the broader view, maybe MIAD is just doing its best to carve out a niche in a bigger, harsher system.

So I think nonprofits have earned a little slack. This kind of work is notoriously difficult, thankless, and underpaid. I mean, It’s not like anyone’s getting rich running MIAD.

causeiq.com/organizations/milwaukee-institute-of-art-and-design,391201561/

Okay, rich is a relative term. I bet Jeff doesn’t consider himself rich. He probably lives in one of the medium-nice houses in Shorewood, has two cars, a recently remodeled kitchen, solid retirement fund, and an expensive hobby. I bet he owns a used sailboat or collects antique cigar boxes or something. I’m totally guessing. I don’t know Jeff personally. Really though, I bet he’s a fun, nice guy who cares about his job. I mean that with no snark whatsoever. I’d get lunch with him anytime. Jeff, let’s get lunch.

But, you know, can I just say something? Without negating any of the above, I’d just like to state, for the record, that I do get shivers every time I walk past MIAD’s admissions department.

It’s one of the nicer spaces in the school, with a big glass facade and cool furniture. Students never go there once they’re enrolled, but each day they walk past and think to themselves, “I bet that chair cost a lot.” I had a similar room in my house growing up, with a sofa I wasn’t allowed to sit on unless company came over. At MIAD, it’s the place where visiting parents are taken after touring the building. It’s where my mom and I were taken after our own tour. We were led past the admissions desk to a big glass table in a secluded back room. I can remember the moment clearly. I felt like I’d accomplished something just by being there. I felt like I’d been chosen, that I was special. I felt vaguely resentful toward Mom, as she seemed to be the only thing standing between me and my destiny of becoming a real artist. I knew it was imperative that I convince this woman to cosign a (then) $40,000 loan.

This, all of this, it gives me more than shivers. It makes me sad, in a serious and unfunny way that’s not well suited to the thing I’m trying to write now. It makes me angry. It kind of makes me want to chuck all Jeff’s dumb cigar boxes into Lake Michigan.

Two things here. First, I wrote “I bet that chair cost a lot,” before taking this photo. I guess $130 was a lot more to me at eighteen. Second, take note that MIAD’s admissions department has recently been relocated, directly adjacent to the main entrance. A more cynical writer would make a joke about adding a gift shop.

Sorry Jeff. I don’t mean to take it out on you. I know you’re doing your best. It’s just frustrating, you know? Even now, nine years later, I’m sitting here, frustrated. Aren’t you? Shouldn’t we all be?

I am sorry if my old writing came off as somewhat hostile. Truly. I’m trying to do better this time. Oh--actually, no. That part I quoted earlier wasn’t the hostile part. This is the hostile part:

Remember the tour I took with my mom? It was led by a former MIAD student. Most of the school’s admissions staff are former students. So are a great number of other staff and adjunct positions. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a glaring problem if any of the school’s full-time fine art faculty had gone to MIAD. Or any staff with salaries high enough to be listed by name on the school’s 990 form. But MIAD doesn’t pay high salaries to its past students. Why would they? They all majored in art.¹

I worked for MIAD myself, for a short time, teaching continuing education classes. Actually, I was working there when I wrote my big MIAD exposé. That excerpt above, my boss read it back to me, as I sat across her desk, trying not to poop my pants. It wasn’t my most prudent career move. I couldn’t afford to lose the job if I wanted to make my student loan payments. You know, the loans I made my mom sign because I wanted to be an artist. How naive, in retrospect. How did I ever get the impression that a degree would make me an artist?

“MIAD is a place to come when you’re so into something that you want to do it for keeps, make a career of it. You know, get paid for doing what you’d probably be willing to do for free.” (Screenshot taken from MIAD: where passion meets purpose)

Oh, that’s right.

I’m not saying there’s any conspiracy. I don’t think anyone is a villain. I’m certain Jeff is not an eldritch warlock who keeps students’ souls in little jars in a secret room in his Shorewood mansion. Of course he isn’t. That’s ridiculous.

Really though, we’re having a lot of fun at Jeff’s expense today, but the point of this article is not to cast blame. It’s not an indictment of Jeff, or of MIAD. I know, it sounds a heck of a lot like an indictment of MIAD. But here’s the thing--I like MIAD. It’s important to me. I don’t want art schools to disappear, and I don’t want kids to stop enrolling in them. I loved art school. And I love art students. They’re some of my favorite people, second only to, well, artists.

So what is the point, exactly? Can I be honest with you? I have no clue. Up until now, I haven’t done anything other than state the problem. I’m like the twelve-year-old kid who gets on his parents for not having a fuel-efficient car. He’s technically correct, but also kind of a shit, because it’s easiest to criticize others when you’re not taking responsibility.

So how do we do that, take responsibility? Now that we’re here, we find ourselves stuck on the same question. What should we do?

Back then, what I did was crack open a 16 fl oz energy drink, take a 45-minute caffeine nap, and download a pirated Minecraft launcher. But maybe it’s time to ask again. What should we do? Or, to put it more meticulously: What lines of thinking, talking, or acting can we follow to meet our responsibility for nurturing the development of nascent artists?

I still have absolutely no clue. But at least we have a more specific question. And actually, I think I have an idea for how to get closer to an answer. Can you give me another few weeks? Just hang tight. I’ll be right back, in part two.

1. Worth noting, yes, MIAD has a whole design department that literally none of this article applies to. What’s always been interesting to me is that “art” takes top billing in the school’s name and most of its promotional materials, though when it comes time to cite employment statistics, it’s the design department you hear about.