Gardner Invites New Art Attitude

Robert G. Gardner, director of the Film Study Center, said Wednesday that "it is going to take an enormous change in traditional educators" before the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts can achieve maximum usefulness. Gardner made his remarks during a Brattle Street Forum discussion of "The Future of the Visual Arts" broadcast over WBGH-TV from the Carpenter Center.

Gardner, who works with students in the actual production of films, criticized traditional educators for falling to realize that "some kinds of educational experiences cannot be gained by reading books." He argued that students can best open their eyes to things that are meaningful by producing things that are meaningful.

"There will have to be a radical departure in educational technique" to make room for both the analytic critic of the arts and the artist himself at Harvard and elsewhere, he said.

Gardner and four other panelists touched on a variety of subjects during the two-hour discussion, from the need to raise standards in television broadcasting to the distingtion between art and communication.

Edward L. Bornays, an author and a leading public relations counselor, claimed that television quality could best be improved by public pressure on the advertisers and broadcasters. He said pressure groups had achieved results in their attempts to improve radio programming.

Gerhart D. Wiebe, dean of the School of Communications and Public Relations at Boston University, disagreed, saying that when the public applies pressure to broadcasters, it is not usually in the interests of quality. He cited the case of program which stirred widespread protest because it used the word "damn." Wiebe said he had objected to the program because of its "semi-fascist theme."

Wiebe contended that the responsibility for educating for taste lies with the business community and the universities which train future advertisers and broadcasters.

Moderator Theodore R. Sizer, assistant professor of Education, expressed the view that "if we are going to wait for tastes to be raised through the formal educational system, we're going to wait an awfully long time."

Also on the panel was Russell Connor, television lecturer at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.