In the field 01 - March 28th - Teachers College Columbia University

-->

I go to TC Columbia to see the campus, meet professor Victoria Marsick specialized in informal learning and professor Lyle Yorks who conducted the collaborative inquiry into the transformative powers of community art.

Columbia is Ivy League. This means it is old and expensive. I saw kids arriving in a car with chauffeur. The Columbia campus is big and classic, proclaiming prestige. You can clearly recognize the former British influence of the Kings College. And so you see references to ancient European heritage in architecture as well as in writing. On one of the facades over a series of neoclassic Dorian columns I read: "Homer - Herodotus - Sophocles - Plato - Aristotle - Demosthenes - Cicero - Vergil". I wonder why they put that up there and what it actually says?

When entering Teachers College, the education department of Columbia University, you can read over the security desk a quote of John Dewey, one of the famous professors who taught here. Other then the namedropping outside there is no doubt about the message of these words.

I have a conversation with professor Yorks and he gives me the peer-reviewed publication of his research into the Transformative Power of Community Arts. (order online) I also meet professor Marsick who invites me to diner with a couple of other graduate students and meet her husband Peter Neaman who is well informed on the New York art scene.