Finding The Words That Support The Arts

In an article for TheNew York Times (September 10, 2013), art critic/reviewer Roberta Smith reports on the proposed sale of art works in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. She decries the city managers in Detroit who raised the idea of selling works, “as if the institute were a goose whose golden eggs included art by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Caravaggio, van Eyck and Breughel”. She makes it clear that the loss of this institution would be a disaster for Detroit and a great loss for culture.

In the final paragraphs of her article, Smith says, “One reason such cuts are tolerated is America’s shortsighted separation of education and economics.  If the United States aims to produce more and import less, it needs designers and inventors of things to be produced.  Such skills require just the kind of imagination and ingenuity that are nourished by art training from an early age and by museums.”

She concludes, “Detroit has survived many losses, but the destruction of this museum would leave a wound that would be impossible to bear.  It would mean not only the loss of a great civic achievement and of a beacon, but also of an essential life tool.” 

Smith's eloquence speaks for a non-profit sector that regularly struggles to find new words to convince a dubious public that the arts are worth the money we spend on them. Sure there are arguments for social service causes and many of these pull at the heart. But the arts are vital. As Smith points out: they nourish the imagination and ingenuity that fuel our progress and our dreams.