Are the Arts Essential?
A book review
Tommer Peterson
Are the Arts Essential? In this timely volume, Arthurs and DiNiscia pose this question with an expansive and nuanced definition of “essential,” examining the active role of the arts in social change, systemic change, policy development, community, and the political arena. They explore the question: Why do we tend to dismiss the arts, as well as the humanities, as constructive resources when we face the critical challenges of our time?
The book consists of a collection of twenty-five essays from twenty-seven authors representing a wide range of perspectives, and providing diverse responses to the question. It grew out of a series of three invitational gatherings conducted under the auspices of the John Bandemas Center at NYU, beginning in 2018 and concluding in 2020, designed to enrich the conversations around the question. These dates are noteworthy, as the Covid pandemic, and the sea-changes to the cultural landscape that are still in progress, were yet to emerge. There is much of value to the post-Covid world in this material, and the thoughtful examinations of the question may now be even more relevant.
It is not feasible to summarize all twenty-five essays in this short review. The authors, largely academics, institutional leaders, and a number of established artists, represent a spectrum of thought . Most compelling are the variety of surprising tangents that essayists took in responding to the question. It is the sum of this collective inquiry where its value, and its potential to inform the cultural sector in unexpected ways, is to be found.
That said, following are some brief excerpts to illustrate the latitude and quality of these offerings:
Mariét Westerman, vice chancellor and chief executive officer of New York University Abu Dhabi, sets the stage. (pg. 206)
There will never be consensus on a definition of art that holds up across all cultures and eras.
Cristal Chanelle Truscott, associate professor of Performance Studies and Graduate Acting at Northwestern University, speaks of the idea of the Cultural Conservatory, imbedded learning in the arts that is inseparable from daily experience. (pg. 132)
. . . . an audience member asked, “How were you all trained to sing?” The performers paused, seemingly baffled by the question, and looked to each other for words, until one of them finally stated that singing is just everywhere in their lives in South Africa. (Another person from their community) further explained, “To start the day at school, we sing. When there is a wedding, we sing. When we play, we sing. When we work, we sing. For funerals, we sing. In the home we sing. Everywhere and for everything we sing.”
Edward Hirsch, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, looks at the role of poetry in civil society. (pg. 75)
Poetry can give heart and voice to particular and specialized groups—in fact, it needs to do so—but it appeals to a larger and more disparate community too. It’s important to remember that there is an element of civitas in poetry. There are invaluable public poems, political interventions. Poetry can be a crucial form of social action, and there are moments and times when it can and should mount the barricades and try to change the world. Perhaps this is just such a moment.
Alice Sheppard, founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, talks about the role of dance in her mid-career change to moving in her wheelchair. (pg. 80)
Now, twenty years into disability, and seventeen into chair use, I have a meaningful vocabulary of chaired movement. Some ideas I picked up in community with other wheelchair users, “We’re going for a push, a roll—even a stroll!” At first these felt awkward, perhaps a little self-conscious, but I soon realized that this was my own internalized ableism at work. . . . Dance class was showing me that there was a technique to moving in a wheelchair: pull, push, stroke, slam, shove, haul, feather. . . . listening in on a conversation in which one wheelchair user discussed the relationship of his stroke to his torso as an expression of masculinity. I became expert at guiding the chair with one finger.
Karen L. Ishizuka, chief curator of the Japanese American National Museum, examines the importance of artistic practice and the arts to the Japanese-American inmates of the concentration camps during their incarceration during WWII, and the work of the next generation addressing their collective inherited trauma. (pg.228)
. . . I found myself longing to “get out of camp.” I referred to this persistent psychological condition of having “barbed wire of the mind.” . . .The Yonsei artist Mari Shibuya similarly states, “It lives in our bodies.” She reiterates the corporeal harm: “Incarceration is the question you almost asked about the bruise you don't remember getting.”
Steven Tepper, dean and director of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, leapfrogs over the question, jumping directly to the ways the arts are essential in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) world. (pg. 176)
Technology and ubiquitous computing are fundamentally altering human experience, as our bodies and brains are connected to everything, everyone, and everyplace. Without doubt the 4IR will change art; what is left to be seen is the extent to which artists will change the 4IR and its capacity to make life richer and beautifully complex—rather than more complicated. In an age of ubiquitous computing, engineers will continue to write code to achieve known outcomes: it will be the artists who will activate code to achieve unknown possibilities.
Essayists featured in this collection are generally of a generation well established in their careers —which is great. The accelerated rate of change, and increasingly high-stakes outcomes we face, sometimes over-value the “new” in the cultural conversations. The book is a reminder that age, experience, and intellectual rigor have much to bring to the table. At the same time, it would be of great interest to hear how artists and cultural workers on the front lines of social change, racial equity, and community development would answer the question, Are the Arts Essential?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tommer Peterson is a former deputy director of Grantmakers in the Arts.
