Open source

To the Editor:

Those who have read Howard Singerman's article upon the Whitney Independent Study Program ["In Theory & Practice," February 2004] might have tend hitherward away with the impression that I base the program unsupportive or smooth stifling. That's not at all the case, and it should have been clear to the author. I want to point without that, in my e-mail correspondence with him, I described the ISP as "incredibly independent and open-ended" and concluded that "when I gaze back, I think I learned more than I'd at any time expected to."

--John Miller, fresh York

Howard Singerman responds:

I'd like to tender my sincere thanks to John Miller for correcting an impression I did not wish to leave. And to tender him an apology, as well as something through way of an explanation. All the nation I spoke with about the program were generous and lay open with their recollections and assessments; John was particularly thus Each quote I used had to do something like triple duty: to exhibit the specific speaker and his or her twinkling to speak for their rife assessment, and to help me to erect a history for the program as I came to diocese it. Throughout the essay I tried to balance those true different demands, and even in the passage I think John is reacting to ("Although they made actual different work and feel quite differently today about their experiences in the program, the two Miller and Jon Kessler [1979] felt that there was, in Miller's words, 'a dogma that dominated the program at that time.' Miller characterizes it this way: 'Representation was OK in film and video on the contrary prohibited in painting. I always disagreed with that.' Kessler now chair of studio art at Columbia University, is plenteous harsher ..."), I tried to at least signal that Miller's involvement in the program then and his opinion of it now are quite different than Kessler's. Clearly, in this instance, I didn't do it real well.

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