Just what is needed for a full education? Roughly 100 years ago, James A. Garfield told a group of Williams College alumni that he would be perfectly happy with nothing more than "a log hut with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins at one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus, and libraries without him." Garfield, then a Congressman and later the twentieth President of the United States, was apotheosizing the then president of Williams as "the true teacher." There may still be a few educators like Mark Hopkins who can achieve remarkable results with only a simple bench and never mind the complex apparatus that goes with a modern education. But in an increasingly complicated world of mechanical means, electronic adjuncts, and multimedia possibilities, that would hardly be sufficient for the student of the arts. It is fitting that SR's expanded Arts supplement finds its initial focus in the California Institute of the Arts, the latest effort to bring together exponents of a variety of artistic disciplines.
Ample land and an endowment of $20-million of Walt Disney's money have made possible the construction of a "log hut" situated on 600 acres and including extensive studios for music, film, TV, dance, theater, design, the written word, and the graphic arts. Within its spacious white reinforced-concrete frame and dark brick walls are intimate music practice rooms, extensive work areas for painters and sculptors, several libraries, a file of slides that can be utilized for background projections and recorded music for use on its own or for underscoring. To assist the student in doing not only his (or her) own thing but somebody else's as well, both the practical and the academic worlds have been fine-combed for faculty members. […]
