ARE THE ARTS ESSENTIAL?

Eloquent essays on the vital meaning of art.

Arthurs is a senior fellow at the John Brademas Center at NYU, and DiNiscia is Deputy Director for Research and Strategic Initiatives at the Center. In this important collection, the editors gather a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse group of more than two dozen eminent scholars, artists, professionals working in the field of arts and culture, and funders who support the arts. Jazz pianist Fred Hersch (interviewed by Arthurs), composer Tania León, choreographer and dancer Alice Sheppard, and Deborah Willis, historian of African American photography, join the other contributors in responding to the title question with a resounding “yes.” They argue forcefully for the importance of the arts in strengthening social ties, benefiting individuals, fostering community, engaging with the sciences, and recording and sharing human experiences. As music history scholar Karol Berger notes, “when you think that art is inessential and useless,” remember those artists who have been persecuted, marginalized, silenced, incarcerated, and killed because of the power of their creations. Like Berger, several contributors underscore the political significance of the arts. Philosophy professor and ethicist K. Anthony Appiah asserts that art “readies us for our real lives, enlarges our political possibilities, connects us within and across identities.” For Zeyba Rahman and Hussein Rashid, the arts, speaking through the language of imagination, “can bring alive communities and urgent problems that are unfamiliar to us by creating a universal resonance and relatability.” The arts nurture individuals, just as with other forms of sustenance. “All people…yearn for beauty,” writes Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, “also long for grace, also have hearts as well as stomachs that need to be fed and filled. And people inevitably create beauty and grace when they lift their voices in song, move their bodies to music, shape color and form on canvas or in sculpture, or use language to tell stories in ways that delight and surprise.”

A vigorous, timely, necessary defense of creativity.