Conference to examine where the
arts belong
What
art can do to promote vitality of liberal society
 |
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture |
Staff report
For more than a century, the arts have undergone a strange
and difficult evolution.
Consider the visual arts today: corporations now not only
fund but control whole
wings of many of the country’s leading museums, said Dustin Kidd, a fellow
at the Institute for Advanced Studies
in Culture at U.Va. New digital technologies
have made it easier for marketing firms to appropriate the images of classical
art. Government-funded arts programs are repeatedly subjected to partisan politics.
At
a colloquium April 2 and 3, sponsored by the interdisciplinary
research center, a group of leading thinkers and practitioners
will discuss “The Fate of
the Arts” — the forms of imaginative expression that have long been
near the heart of human society — and their possible futures.
Schedule:
Rotunda Dome Room
Friday, April 2
10 a.m.
Terry Eagleton
11 a.m.
Krzysztof Ziarek
2 p.m.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
4 p.m. (Art Museum)
Poetry reading, Adam Zagajewski, reception following, University Art Museum,
sponsored by The Hedgehog Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review
Saturday, April 3
10 a.m.
Bill Ivey
11 a.m.
Suzi Gablik
1 p.m.
Adam Zagajewski
2 p.m.
Panel discussion with all six guest speakers, and U.Va. English professor
Michael Levinson |
The
guest speakers will address questions such as,” In what way have the
arts lost their ability to hold sway over the public imagination, and what does
that say about the society we live in? “What kind of influence can the
arts exert within a society dominated by the forces of the free market, information
technologies, and political power?” and “What alternative
structures, communities and institutions are needed so that the arts
become an integral
part of our collective public life?”
Scheduled speakers include: literary critic Terry Eagleton,
from the University of Manchester; Adam Zagajewski, Polish
poet, essayist and
novelist; Bill
Ivey, founder and past president of the Country Music Association
and former chair
of the National Endowment for the Arts; artist and art critic Suzi
Gablik; Nicholas Wolterstorff, philosophy professor at Yale; and
Krzysztof Ziarek,
literary theorist
and critic at SUNY-Buffalo. Most
of the symposium will be held in the Rotunda Dome Room, where
seating is limited. Zagajewski will give a poetry
reading April 2
at 4 p.m. at
the University
Art Museum. For information, see the Web site at www.virginia.edu/iasc/colloquia.html. |
