Monuments Man George Stout (second from right) and others remove Michelangelo's Madonna and Child from the salt mine in Altaussee, Austria on July 10, 1945 [here]If you have seen the film, then you may have had the same experience I did. The film was framed by Frank Stokes, played by George Clooney, trying to explain the importance of saving art to Harry Truman and a couple other Senior White House folks. Truman struggles with the idea that art is worth risking someone's life to save. For him, it has no "real" tangible value. Now, this is the man who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. He's definitely not squeamish when it comes to sacrificing life for some purpose. The problem is that he can't wrap his mind around any value art might have.
Recently Obama followed in Truman's missteps when -
"At an event at a GE plant in Wisconsin Thursday, President Obama reiterated his support for the manufacturing industry, saying that Americans could probably make more in that line of work “than they might than [with] an art history degree." [here] [see Obama's apology here]I am of the opinion that art should be appreciated for art's sake. But art also has social currency. Art is a means to opposing oppression [see the Smithsonian's exhibit on art and the Civil Right's Movement here - or South African resistance to Apartheid here and here - or Iraqi artists' responses to war here]. Artists are at the front lines of taking on dictators and drawing attention to inequalities. The Taliban's attack on the ancient Buddhas of Bumiyan [here] speaks to the continuing importance of art in the geo-political realm. Street artist around the world [Peru] [Egypt] [Palestine] show us that art is part of our common human need to challenge the world we find ourselves in. As educators, this is exactly what we should encourage our students to do.
Alas, given our nation's turn away from the arts and humanities and towards STEM, one can only wonder if the next generation will find even less value in art than the current one. Would anyone step up to save a work of art from destruction or to defend an artists' performative right as a human right? Will anyone take to the streets, paint in hand, to confront the oppressor? And will they have the tools to understand, or even care, what artists around the world are expressing?
No comments:
Post a Comment