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Old in Art School

A Memoir of Starting Over

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
34 of 34 copies available
34 of 34 copies available

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school―in her sixties―to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived.

How are women and artists seen and judged by their age, looks, and race? What does it mean when someone says, "You will never be an artist?" Who defines what "an artist" is and all that goes with such an identity, and how are these ideas tied to our shared conceptions of beauty, value, and difference?

Old in Art School is Nell Painter's ongoing exploration of those crucial questions. Bringing to bear incisive insights from two careers, Painter weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Nell Painter describes her unusual decision to pursue art despite being deemed too "old" by some of the faculty at her art school, Rhode Island School of Design. After a prestigious career as a historian at Princeton University, she sets out on a path of continued learning. Through her narration, we witness her journey toward realizing her dream of being a painter. In the memoir genre, the author is often the preferred narrator as the confessional nature of these works is enhanced when recounted by the person who wrote them. Painter shares the ups and downs of enrolling in a new discipline in her 60s and her eventual successes. Listeners suffer and celebrate with her through each dip and rise along the way. M.R. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 12, 2018
      A history professor in her 60s takes a break from teaching at Princeton University to go to art school in this witty and perceptive memoir. After enrolling at Rutgers University in the fall of 2007, Painter (The History of White People), quickly immerses herself in her drawing and painting classes as she wryly observes her younger classmates “upholding art-school sartorial drama in bright yellow hair and piercings.” She notes that her fellow students, who know far less of the world than she does, are better painters, and she explores how her thinking as a historian hobbles her as an artist. Her “20th century eyes favored craft... narrative and meaning” while her 21st century classmates and teachers preferred the “DIY aesthetic” and appropriation from popular culture (e.g., cartoons, pornography). Painter goes on to attend graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she feels like a misfit as the oldest—and only black—student in her class, and is also unappreciated for her intellectual sophistication, though she ultimately develops her own aesthetic and confidence in her work. This is a courageous, intellectually stimulating, and wholly entertaining story of one woman reconciling two worlds and being open to the possibilities and changes life offers.

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  • English

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