Open source.

To the Editor:

Those who have read Howard Singerman's article on the Whitney Independent Study Program ["In Theory & Practice," February 2004] might have come away with the impression that I found the program unsupportive or even stifling. That's not at all the case, and it should have been clear to the author. I want to point out that, in my e-mail correspondence with him, I described the ISP as "incredibly free and open-ended" and concluded that "when I look back, I think I learned more than I'd ever expected to."

--John Miller, New York 

Howard Singerman responds:

I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to John Miller for correcting an impression I did not wish to leave. And to offer him an apology, as well as something by way of an explanation. All the people I spoke with about the program were generous and open with their recollections and assessments; John was particularly so. Each quote I used had to do something like triple duty: to represent the specific speaker and his or her moment, to speak for their current assessment, and to help me to construct a history for the program as I came to see it. Throughout the essay I tried to balance those very different demands, and even in the passage I think John is reacting to ("Although they made very different work and feel quite differently today about their experiences in the program, both Miller and Jon Kessler [1979] felt that there was, in Miller's words, 'a dogma that dominated the program at that time.' Miller characterizes it this way: 'Representation was OK in film and video but prohibited in painting. I always disagreed with that.' Kessler, now chair of studio art at Columbia University, is much harsher ..."), I tried to at least signal that Miller's involvement in the program then and his opinion of it now are quite different than Kessler's. Clearly, in this instance, I didn't do it very well.