Pedagogy Of Tears: Duckworth Gallery, Brooklyn, NY USA

In 2020, in the early days of COVID, I wrote an essay for Precog magazine titled, “The Pedagogy of Tears.” In January of 2020 the low-residency visual arts MFA that I was directing at New Hampshire Institute of Art had come to a painfully sad ending after seven years. During that time, we had accumulated a magnificent faculty, mostly from NYC, and in that awful ending our friendships had deepened. We remain in close touch and the artists in this exhibit all come from that faculty group.

Pedagogy of tears refers to that MFA program and, for me, a re-imagining of how an MFA might allow students to speak with the heart. Low-residency students are mostly adults with lives and an already accumulated life’s work in their hands. Our commitment in that program was to meet students where they were and work to help them to articulate and actualize their desired processes and artworks. In addition, I cannot help but cry when speaking to students at meaningful moments. I am moved by their efforts in the face of so much that resists. I tried to fight that impulse but came to realize that my tears were a moment to acknowledge the depth of our human efforts. That the tears might be a part of the pedagogy of teaching art.

We are a group that has held each other close with deep interest in the work each of us makes. How the art we make is also (literally?) a mirror and a mark of these same pedagogic qualities (immersion, saturation, compassion, access, etc.). Our connection surprises us. And sustains us. This exhibit is presented in honor of our friendship and with hope of nudging the art world towards the best version of what it might be. Perhaps a place where tears, love care and meeting people where they are. That hunger continues between us.

- Craig Stockwell, Curator and participant