Harvard Arts Task Force Report (December 2008)
In 2007/2008 HU convened a university wide task force on the Arts. The final report is at the link above. The document addresses many of the same insitutitonal challenges as apply to BU and CFA. The first 20 pp are an essay on vision and priorities. A one page scheme of recommendations follows that essay.
There are many points well-discussed in the report about the status of the arts at a University. Here are two interesting passages. Please find and repost others:
No serious university would relegate what it regards as cognitively important—laboratory science, for example, or economics—to a marginal institutional space without regular faculty or adequate funding or expert training or rigorous evaluation.
Because the arts are deemed at Harvard to be extracurricular, many students remain oblivious to the hard work—the careful training, perception, and intelligence—that the arts require. They know that writing essays is a skilled and time-consuming labor. They recognize that problem sets in math and science are meant to be difficult. But ask them to photograph a landscape, compose a short story, or direct a scene rather than write an analytical essay and they will almost universally assume that the exercise will be quickly and easily dispatched. The problem is not that they believe art-making is trivial but rather that they believe that talent alone, and not thought or diligence, will determine the outcome. To teach non-artists to be as thoughtful and diligent in drawing a picture as they are in conducting an experiment or analyzing a complex text would mean not only, or primarily, enhancing their appreciation of art. It would mean teaching them to exercise a quite different kind of diligence, one involving the mind and the body in different ways than analytical writing and computation do.
4 Comments
Jim Petosa posted on January 19, 2011 at 3:07 pm
“Hard work” – funny how it almost sounds puritanical.
I do wonder what is more at work here in an educational environment that turns art into an extracurricular function.
Fear of the Dionysian usually causes a diminishment of its intellectual value. And when the arts become too Apollonian, there is then cause to discount it as artless (which it can be if it is utterly devoid of the visceral!).
Fortunately, BU, through the existence of CFA, communicates through its actions and commitment to the arts a different mindset. We would do well to help our institution articulate why we exist. Too often, we leave it to others to express the raison d’etre for CFA and then we judge it according to our own vision. Perhaps, we need to be the ones to communicate to the community why they are glad they invented us! (I often say to my graduate directing students – “Actors invented directors. Let’s let every rehearsal end with actors being glad that they come up with the idea!” Perhaps, we need to talk with a greater sense of urgency about who we are, what we are doing, and how we impact/can impact/should impact/will impact the larger community in a way that makes everyone happy that we exist as more than a series of extracurricular clubs and gatherings.
Phyllis Hoffman posted on February 7, 2011 at 7:44 pm
This is an outstanding statement that richly contextualizes the place of the arts not only at Harvard but in life, learning, society and the broader civilization. What struck me is that the status of the arts at Harvard in their marginalized condition is a paradigm for the stature of the arts in the national psyche. Despite the abundance, excellence and richness of artistic endeavor in the U.S., we as a nation have never embraced the arts as a fundamental human value, despite the possibility that, as this report suggests, the founding fathers intended the “pursuit of happiness” to mean a commitment to the arts. The obvious evidence is the disposal of arts education when budgets are tight or the ongoing threat to the NEA. I think, therefore, that CFA’s mission statement should include an explanation of why the arts are necessary and fundamental to a civilized society and as essential to human life and well-being as the air we breathe.
Jim Petosa posted on February 18, 2011 at 12:17 am
Agreed, Phyllis! What follows are some of JFK’s most memorable quotations on the question of the Arts and Society. Always good to revisit these notions tho it is increasingly difficult to believe that an American president actually said them!
The Arts
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.” Address at Harvard University, June 14, 1956
“There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age Elizabeth also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.” (Response to letter sent by Miss Theodate Johnson, Publisher of Musical America to the two presidential candidates requesting their views on music in relation to the Federal Government and domestic world affairs. Answer from then Senator John Kennedy was dated September 13, 1960.)
“…I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.” Closed-circuit television broadcast on behalf of the National Cultural Center from the National Guard Armory in Washington, D.C., November 29, 1962
“To further the appreciation of culture among all the people, to increase respect for the creative individual, to widen participation by all the processes and fulfillments of art – this is one of the fascinating challenges of these days.” Magazine article “The Arts in America” printed in the December 8, 1962 issue of Look. (This was part of a special adaptation of Creative America The Ridge Press, Inc., 1962.)
“Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline.” “The Arts in America,” 1962 article by John F. Kennedy
“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” Amherst College, 10/26/63
“I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty…an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.” Remarks at Amherst College, 1963
“In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.” Remarks at Amherst College, 1963
“It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society- in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.” Amherst College, 10/26/63
“I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.” Amherst College, 10/26/63
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose…and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.” Statement prepared for Creative America, 1963 (Inscribed at the Kennedy Center for the performing Arts)
Garden Pro posted on May 28, 2024 at 3:48 pm
The Harvard Arts Task Force Report from 2008 provides a compelling argument for the inclusion of arts within the core academic curriculum. It emphasizes that arts education requires the same level of diligence and cognitive effort as subjects like science and mathematics. This shift in perception would not only enhance the appreciation of the arts but also encourage a different kind of intellectual rigor.
By integrating the arts into the regular academic framework, universities can create a more holistic educational environment that values creativity and critical thinking equally.
Feel free to share more interesting passages from the report!