“/>Perhaps it is my deep and long-time love for the siblings of culture – the arts and humanities. Or maybe it is my background in the folk arts. Some would say that it is simply contrariness.
Whatever the cause, I question trying to insert art, in what feels like an after-thought, into every occasion. It started years ago when organizers asked me for names of artists because, “We need a guitar player to perform during lunch.” Or “Could you find some artists to display their art on tables? We need to fill the room with some color.”
Those requests have morphed into comments of how important artists are to a community. However, the follow-up comment is, “We want to contact artists to invite them to donate art to our upcoming event to raise money for _______? It’s a great cause, and it will give them great visibility.”
The current rallying cry calls to improve school curriculum by emphasizing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), and I would agree that our educational system definitely needs work. Now, it is the arts side of the house advocating, almost like the kid who never gets selected by the team no matter how wildly the hand waves, “Pick me, pick me, pick me.”
The request? To change STEM to STEAM by adding Art to the equation. By simply adding a letter to a word, are we assuming that the problem is “fixed”?
The problem is far deeper than a missing letter. Somewhere between the early, early humans who painted on a cave wall and now, we have lost the sense that the arts and humanities are a fully integrated part of our daily lives. When Commodore Perry dropped anchor off the shore of Japan, the Japanese had no word for art in their language, even though their lives were filled with ages of beauty, the use of elegant designs, and rich colors. We live in a world in which we have created silos of knowledge areas from which we then choose which is “best.”
Until we as a society fully understand how the arts and humanities inform all that we do, don’t we run the risk of losing the very markers of our humanness?
[Photo from Pictograph Cave State Park.]
© 2014 E.L. Kittredge