Using the Artistic Process to Teach Ph.D Students with Dr. Jonathan Fineberg

In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome Dr. Jonathan Fineberg, an art historian, critic of contemporary art, and the program director of the PhD in Creativity program at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. 

Listen in to learn Jonathan’s perspective on the relationship between creativity and the arts, how art encourages us to see things in different ways and give things new meaning, and the process he uses to enable his PhD students to apply creativity to their specific discipline.

“If you want to get great abs, you do a lot of sit ups. If you want to try and be a creative thinker, you need to exercise the capacity to build the new connections in the brain for solving problems and in particular, problems that can’t be solved.” – Jonathan Fineberg

He also speaks on the beneficial role of critique in the creative process and why non-linear thinking is a critical part of The PhD in Creativity program while being frowned upon in other PhD fields.

Plus, Jonathan details how you can translate these PhD-level creativity strategies to your K-12 classroom.

Jonathan’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:

1. Be a really open listener. Understand your students and what they need from you.
2. Develop a trust-based mentor relationship with each student. If students trust you, they will leap into something they don’t understand just because you told them to try it.
3. Have an open mind.

Jonathan Fineberg is an art historian, a critic of contemporary art, and the program director of the PhD in Creativity program at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. The particular art theory that has evolved in his writing over a 50-year career is a social history of art grounded in psychoanalysis and the close reading of objects. This derives from his efforts to understand the dynamics of creativity and how societies use and interact with works of art. 

He is the author of “Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being,” the most widely read survey of postwar art, and co-creator (with John Carlin) of “Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art,” the award-winning PBS television documentary of 2005. Fineberg is also the author of some 30 books and catalogs on modern art.