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|  | | The following letters and documents cover the period just before and just after William Girard was dismissed from the Center for Creative Studies, following a 30-year career there. They appear, more or less, in chronological order.
It was perhaps inevitable that an educational institution founded by the Society of Arts and Crafts and promoted to Detroiters as "free of academic conventions" but dedicated "to the ideals of craftsmanship, service and beauty" would later become a serious academic institution subject to the internecine battles that instructors everywhere engage in or complain about, or both. William Girard straddled that divide for 30 years.
Over many years, the divide became a chasm and the chasm grew too wide. The academics won. The institution lost.
Beautiful architecture and terrific equipment can add much to the quality of an education. But they are, at best, appurtenances. The true value of an educational institution must be measured by the quality of its instructors. Bill Girard, Jay Holland, Robert Vigiletti and Tony Williams, among others, were living links to a proud artistic patrimony that once thrived in Detroit and at CCS. They and many other colleagues besides were swept away by forces that placed greater value on structures, degrees and impressive resumes than the opinions of students or the visible results of their artistic and educational endeavors.
Their hard work, their good work, was not in vain. Nor are they forgotten by those who benefited from their efforts. History has a way of backtracking to rediscover precious contributions once deemed hopelessly archaic. Art history is filled with such stories. Rembrandt, Botticelli, Caravaggio, El Greco, and Ryder are merely a few of the now-iconic names that history retraced its path to pluck from oblivion.
Bill Girard might just belong in that proud list of the once-ignored, forgotten or dismissed, as might his colleagues, whether mentioned here or not.
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| | 1997
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The attachments follow
| | Attachment #1
| | Attachment #2
| | MetroTimes July 1-7, 1998
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| | Detroit Free Press, July 10, 1998
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