It is strange to attempt to institutionalize the avante- garde in university studio art programs knowing that a feature of any avante garde is the loss of the great majority of its members to random exploration that, however valiant, intelligent and well-meaning, leads to penury, mental illness and suicide (see La Boheme). An institutionalized avante garde is a gross contradiction of terms. Our university art programs create yet another cluster of anemic, static and claustrophobic academic artworks as lifeless as those that launched the Impressionist/ Fauvist /Cubist revolution against the nineteenth century French academy. All cultures require an avante- garde for the new ideas that will save it from itself. It is counter-productive of the vital societal raison d' etre of the avante- garde to homogenize its purpose, program and agenda in a university art department. Academic art is all heading in the same direction. The jargon has become uniform. Language directs the exploration. The current shared dogma celebrates non-narrative, non object oriented, conceptual, gender inspired work that is pale, wan and always doctrinaire. Duchamp wrote out the marching orders in 1920 and so it is. This art is no fun to look at. It is no fun to think about. It all smacks of faux enlightened laziness of mind and muscle. It is as empty as the soupiest, graviest nineteenth century Beaux arts historical narrative extravaganza. The art of today is produced hermetically at a computer or in a studio or factory as separated from nature as the precious polishers of the past.