Is There a Correlation Between a University's Collection and the Quality of Its Art Education?

Yesterday, I posted about the spectacle Randolph College's trustees have made of themselves this week. Background on the controversy here, here, and here.

Conde Nast Portfolio's "Market Movers" blogger, Felix Salmon, submitted this comment:

Are you saying that there's a decent positive correlation between the quality of an art(s) education and the quality of the educational institution's art collection?

That's exactly what I'm saying.

You can get a respectable schooling in art history without seeing, first-hand, every masterpiece in Gardner's Art Through the Ages. In fact, it's impossible to do that — which is why art history students sit in dark classrooms looking at slides and digital images. But there's no doubt that examining the actual work with your own two eyes enhances your understanding and appreciation. You see brushstrokes and details that go unnoticed when looking at a reproduction of a painting and true colors than can be distorted by photographs and scans. Exceptionally high quality digital imaging may be closing the gap between an artwork and an image of an artwork, but there's still something mystical about a direct, personal encounter with a piece that can't be recreated. That's why Georgia O'Keeffe gave art to Fisk University and why any art history professor given the choice would lecture in front of a piece as opposed to in front of even a really good facsimile of it.