Abstract :
This paper examines the changing relationship
of art practice to academic research in higher
education since 1960. Whereas art practice was
often conceived of as divorced from any notion
of academic or theoretical work in the post 1960
art school, by the 1990s the ground had changed
to such a degree that it was possible to pursue
doctoral study in art practice. This emergence of
practice-based PhDs can be considered as part
of a larger shift in art education and its acceptance
of theory.
This article attempts to trace the pedagogical, institutional
and political history of the practice-based
PhD. On the one hand, the practice-based PhD
could be interpreted as the logical consequence of
critical, politically aware practices. On the other
hand, the founding of the practice-based PhD can
be connected to a series of educational reforms,
particularly the introduction of the RAE, and the
increasing need for departments to develop strategies
for economic survival.
In addition to tracing both the pedagogical, institutional
and artistic legacy of practice based PhDs
this paper focuses on the way in which a predominantly
socialist commitment to integrated theory
and practice meets with conservative educational
reforms over the ground of the PhDs. I argue that
this both highlights the institutional input into what
art practice or indeed research is acknowledged to
be and raises questions concerning the possibility
of maintaining a critical art agenda.
