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leek wrote:Shame that they felt the need to use the lowest form of art (graffitti) to express themselves

Crikey wrote:When Bob Carr became premier he gave them independence from the TAFE sector, TAFE fees (cheap) and the right to call their less-than-challenging qualifications degrees.

Crikey wrote:Why has no-one asked why Carr diverted money from education/arts to supporting what has effectively been a finishing school for rich kiddies?

In defence of the National Art School

Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald writes:

I was amazed by Hugo Kelly's piece (yesterday) about my "ranting" on behalf of the National Art School. I was perfectly up front about where I stand on this issue, but I'm at a loss to imagine what stands behind Mr Kelly's sarcastic – and frankly ignorant – comments. His tone is neither clever nor witty – it's nasty.

To call the art school a "finishing school for rich kids" is a stupid and insulting thing to say. Mr Kelly has obviously never had a good look at the place – "terminally down-at-heel" would be a better description. The university sell-off is a last resort to preserve the traditions and independence of the school. The NAS has friends across the political parties – not just Bob Carr, but Rosemary Foote and Peter Collins have been firm supporters.

I can only assume this piece was meant to shore up support for CoFA's bid – which is, by all accounts, far inferior to the Macquarie offer. If CoFA does take over, it will mean a lessening of choice for Sydney's art students and a decline in the quality of art education.

I always thought Crikey was a good idea, but if this is an example of the kind of comment you see fit to print, you are no better than the tabloids at their worst.

Arts reporter and PR consultant Stephen Feneley writes:

It's always easy to portray people in the arts as self indulgent rent seekers sucking off the public teet. Confident that most of your audience will know next to zip about the people and institutions you're ridiculing (defaming), you can pretty much say whatever you like, or at least whatever your partisan sources would like you to say.

Crikey readers must have been appalled and outraged to read Hugo Kelly's piece yesterday about how Bob Carr had supposedly succumbed to the special pleading of a bunch of "artsy hangers-on" and agreed to let them cut loose from TAFE and have their own "art school-cum teachers' welfare collective."

Hugo suggests that the teachers at the National Art School, based inside the old East Sydney gaol, didn't like TAFE because it insists on competencies like literacy and because they had a pretty slack approach to teaching.

Well I don't know where Hugo was when the breakaway of the NAS from TAFE occurred but he couldn't have been anywhere near East Sydney. The fight to keep NAS separate from TAFE was to save the identity of an institution that had existed long before the TAFE system had come into being.

For many decades an art school under one guise or another had existed within the old gaol. The overall campus with its other craft and design schools, most notably fashion, had been known colloquially as East Sydney Tech, but the visual arts school had been separately identified as the National Art School for much if not of all of its history – my understanding of this is that the history is not precise.

Nevertheless, it is without doubt that the NAS was never your run-of-the-mill TAFE art school. It had its own history and tradition and a distinct approach to art education setting it apart not just from the rest of TAFE but Sydney's university-aligned art schools. The teachers, many of them well-known exhibiting artists, would have been happy to stay inside TAFE had the NAS been allowed to maintain its distinct identity.

The independence battle only broke out because TAFE attempted to overhaul the NAS to make it just like any other TAFE school which, contrary to what Hugo Kelly says, would have greatly diminished standards.

In philosophy and approach it would be fair to say that the NAS is traditional if not downright conservative when compared to other art schools and I haven't always found myself in agreement with its teachers. But its ethos was worth saving because it assured diversity in art education. The other schools, particularly Sydney College of the Arts, favoured a more conceptual approach to art while the NAS was unashamedly committed to a studio-based education, steadfastly grounded in the creation of physical objects.

Both approaches are valid. It is grossly unfair to question the professionalism and commitment of the artists who teach at the NAS. As for Kelly's claim that it's nothing more than a finishing school for rich kiddies, that's an accusation that could be levelled at any art school under Brendon Nelson's education regime.