USC and RISD
May 24, 2013
By Temple Ligon
May 24, 2013
A few years ago in the Charlotte Observer an article appeared on the Rhode Island School of Design, aka RISD (pronounced RIZDEE). RISD officials had been in discussions with Charlotte leaders, particularly retired banker Hugh McColl Jr.
McColl is credited with the relocation of the Charleston branch of Providence, R.I.- based Johnson & Wales culinary school to downtown Charlotte, all part of McColl’s hunt for more of the creative class to locate in Charlotte, especially downtown.
To lure Johnson & Wales to downtown Charlotte, the city sold the school six acres of high-end city center real estate for a flat $1 million. Six acres is a little more than a quarter of a million square feet, and for $1 million, that’s less than $4 per square foot, an offer Johnson & Wales found hard to refuse.
To sweeten the deal for Johnson & Wales, the state promised another $10 million in support.
Rated typically among the top three art schools in the U.S., RISD is sometimes cited as the best art school in the country, just ahead of the Art School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the art program at Yale University. Like Johnson & Wales, RISD is located in Providence, R.I. RISD sits on a hillside next to Brown University, both overlooking the center of Providence.
What McColl wanted for downtown Charlotte was a branch of RISD replete with its programs in art studio, art history, film and architecture. What RISD wanted was a Main Street USA setting where there was expected economic expansion for the long haul, according to the RISD representatives who visited Charlotte three times.
In Columbia, that’s what USC has had since 1801.
But after three visits to Charlotte, the RISD team slowed down because the president at RISD announced his retirement. His replacement was briefed up to date, but any decisions about a RISD South were left for a later time.
The president of RISD is John Maeda, who was previously the associate director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Now that Maeda has been in the president’s office at RISD for a few years, the branch campus issue is expected to return to the campus conversation. And this time Columbia can be considered.
To promote USC’s attractions to RISD, attention needs to be paid to the Moore School of Business and its nationally top-ranked international business degree program and its foreign language requirements. There is no business school at RISD, and there is no business school at next-door neighbor Brown University, where the RISD students have a free-flowing reciprocation in class attendance. Brown students can take painting at RISD, for example, and RISD students can take science courses at Brown, and there is no quibbling over admissions or tuitions.
The business of art is business. British artist Damien Hirst took his art directly from his studio a few years ago to the London auction house Sotheby’s, which sold his art at auction over three days, selling for a total of about $178 million. A 1968 oil painting by German artist Gerhard Richter last week sold in a New York auction for a bit more than $37 million. S.C.’s Jasper Johns saw his 1959 painting False Start sell several years ago for a confirmed $80 million, and more recently a 1960s Flag sold in a private sale for a reported $110 million.
Johns, by the way, has been approached to help in the effort to lure RISD to downtown Columbia. He regrets he has no direct connections at RISD, but he acknowledges the value of the RISD addition to downtown Columbia and to USC, where he spent three semesters, his only formal higher education.
When J. Carter Brown took over the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., almost 50 years ago, he dropped his pursuit of a PhD in art history at NYU, and he performed swimmingly with his master’s in art history and his master’s in business administration. Since Brown’s early successes at the National Gallery, museums and galleries and art auction houses around the world have recognized the value of combining two master’s degrees in art management, one in business and another in art history.
USC does not award a master’s degree in art history.
If the RISD students could complete the coursework for an international master’s in business administration at the Moore School, refining their skills in a modern foreign language along the way, and also earn a RISD master’s in art history, the world art job market is theirs. If a USC student could do the same thing, well, the world art job market is theirs, too.
So, Columbia, S.C., potentially the home of a combined master’s degree program in international business and art history, a joint venture between USC and RISD, can soon be known as the home of the best art management program in the country.
And downtown Columbia gets an infusion of younger delegates in the creative class.
Dr. Harris Pastides, president at USC, has been fully briefed on the possibilities.
(This article first appeared by the same author in part in The Columbia Star.)
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