Rowena reed kostellow biography sample

Rowena Reed Kostellow taught design for half a century. She was an immensely influential teacher who spent her life developing and refining a methodology for teaching what she called the ”structure of visual relationships” underlying all art and design.

The principles of study that she helped formulate were embodied in a foundation curriculum that became the basic, universal first year of study for all Pratt Institute art and design students.

Rowena reed kostellow biography sample

Foundation studies, strongly influenced by the Pratt curriculum, were adopted in schools of art and design throughout the country. In many schools, as at Pratt, they are still the bedrock upon which advanced, specialized studies in the arts are built.

But the content of that study has become diluted over time and there is less consensus about what should be taught and how.

There are several reasons for this. Formalisms of all kinds have long been in decline, and one of the results has been a predictable