Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over
Ratings3
Average rating2.7
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?--from publisher's description.
Tags
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
I really expected that reading about the challenges of an older female of color becoming an undergraduate again would be fascinating, while the details about art school itself would be a little dry. Oddly, it was the opposite.
I don't like to rate or review books I don't like. After all, just because I didn't like a book doesn't necessarily mean you won't love it.
But I almost bought this book. I don't want you to make this mistake without fully knowing what this book is about.
If I hadn't found this book at my public library, if I had paid the full cover price of $26.00, I'd have given this book a one-star rating.
I was terribly disappointed by this book. I was expecting a story of a woman who made her way through art school after she retired from a prestigious job as a professor of history at Princeton. Instead, it's the story of one woman's fight against the deeply political beliefs in the art world. And Painter has her own deeply political beliefs.
I don't care about the deeply political beliefs in the art world. I wanted to read a story about an older person taking on a new challenge, I think, and that's not what I got.
Please remember that this is just one little person's opinion. I am not an artist. I am not a scholar. I am an ordinary person who wants to share her thoughts about a book she read.
