College Will Drop Surveys In Fine Arts

The Department of Fine Arts will replace all its middle-level survey courses with intensive studies of specific problems in art, according to Sydney J. Freedburg, Chairman of the Department. The courses to be dropped, among them Fine Arts 130 and 150, surveys of Ancient and Renaissance Art, attempt broad study of all aspects of large segments of the history of art.

The new courses will instead cover more intensively the particular problems raised in these fields. They will not all be introduced at once but will appear in the catalogue one by one over the next two years.

Further details of the new courses will be left to the instructors involved. Freedburg noted, however, that they could not be characterized by any one critical approach simply because each field of art history has special problems of its own.

At the present time, this policy will not affect Fine Arts 13, a broad survey of world art for the novice, although Freedburg commented that changes for it have been and are once again under consideration.

The Department has been dissatisfied with the survey courses because they do not require much intellectual effort on the student's part, it was implied. Furthermore, the number of competent non-concentrators is found to be greater in the present courses which do not give a wide survey of a field.

Previously, the Department had informally recommended that concentrators take at least one survey course in each area of the history of art.