adelaide.labilleguiard

Not that I know of and yes, because we have an alt-ac market in museums that is at least equal in size to the traditional TT market in terms of job openings per year. Fair criticism. Upon further reflection, neither of you are grumpy washed-up crybabies who couldn't hack it.

Right, and you still have not presented any data about the job market in art history. I have a singular point of view and so of course my experience of the field is anecdotal -- that seemed too obvious to require a disclaimer. And I only cited museum jobs... so your response about "tenure-track faculty" (all tenured and tenure-eligible professors, all ranks, including those hired in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) in history departments is a reach twice over. The voices of those of us employed in the field are valuable, particularly in the absence of data. My views and experiences balance those of Bronte1985, another employed art historian. But if you perceive an enjoyable graduate school experience to be "non-normative," then we're probably too far apart on these issues for a productive conversation. Best to turn things back over to those applying this round.

You don’t have those statistics. I cited a list of hires of graduates from “mid-tier” programs, and you haven’t cited a single hire out of a top program (I can think of plenty of those, too). Grad school isn’t that serious, Bronte... it sounds like you just had a bad experience. You shared your status, so it only seems fair to share that I went to a “top program,” by your estimation, and I work in an art-adjacent industry.

Edited/deleted because this is pointless.

If you look through the 10 most recent ArtNews articles announcing new appointments to the position of assistant curator, you get: SMU, WUSTL, UD, UNC, IFA, UW-M and then some contemporary non-PhDs. Those hires probably represents some of the best students at those programs but there are plenty of grads from Princeton and Harvard in dead end curatorial assistant positions at top institutions (the MoMA three-year cap was not put into place to kick out UW-M graduates...) Of course it's not a pure meritocracy. Timing and luck are oft-overlooked factors... every curator or professor under 45 would say those forces contributed to their success. All this thread fosters is overthinking about the process. If you want to pursue a PhD and you can do it without taking on debt*, go for it. If it leads to a job in the field, great, and if not, you can do something else. It is not that serious. * A rule without exceptions: no one should take on debt for a graduate degree in the humanities.

You writing and editing this long meditation about prestige and "the reality of the humanities ca. 2018" and then coming back the next day to reread and revise your own (unanswered and ignored) post is such a perfect metaphor for academia. You posted about being on the job market in 2015. Regardless of the outcome (I can guess...) move on, let it go.