It is the Year of the Arts at Miami, and it is about time!
Art is more than a pleasant thing to look at or listen to. Art challenges the mind and charms the soul. Art advances science, philosophy, and technology. As a place where knowledge is produced, a university needs a thriving artistic community. Knowledge cannot be moved forward if convention is not challenged and artists are specialists in seeing the world in new and unique ways. Art engenders deep, complex, symbolic thought.
Art is indispensable to science. Kenneth Snelson, a sculptor, used cables and rods under tension to build structures that scientists would later use to better understand the structures of proteins.
Methods for rendering three dimensional objects on two dimensional surfaces developed by renaissance artists later led to scientific understanding of how embryos develop.
Artistic thought is simply not the same as scientific thought and that is a good thing; cross-pollination is vital to the advancement of science. Before something can be discovered, it must be imagined. Much of today's science would have seemed so radical mere decades ago that it could have only existed as art. Science would be adrift without a creative spark.
My own life has been thoroughly enriched by the arts. Although I was a terrible piano student as a boy, I came around in high school with involvement in band and theater. At Miami, I have been lucky enough to participate in choirs and bands and even a music fraternity. Each time I find myself totally engrossed in practicing my instrument or listening to a performance, I emerge newly surprised at what art does for me. I have some of my deepest thoughts when thinking is the farthest thing from my mind, when I am instead totally absorbed in art.
To those who would brush off the arts as not serious enough to merit their time (or university funding,) I challenge you to broaden your mind. See the big ideas behind art, not just the entertainment value. Throughout history, art has helped other disciplines push the envelope.
Artists are often the first to take on taboos, allowing scientists to follow suit. The development of the arts and humanity's body of knowledge follow parallel tracks.
This past summer, I was part of an interdisciplinary research program at the University of Cincinnati. I was doing geography research. Other students were doing work in microbiology, chemistry, psychology, engineering, ceramics, and poetry. I was at first skeptical of the latter two. What does ceramics research look like? But as soon as I took the time to get to know the researchers and what they were doing, I was embarrassed at my pre-judgment. I visited the ceramics shop one day for a tour and left both enlightened and moved. The kneejerk reaction of thinking of the arts as not serious disciplines for college study is just intellectual snobbery.
So take this year and next year, and hopefully the rest of your lives to expose yourself to the arts. Engage your own creative impulses. Take advantage of the opportunity to think unconventionally. Do your brain plasticity a favor and learn to play an instrument. Get lost in a book of poetry, a painting or a sculpture garden. If you open your mind to art's gifts, you will find immense respect for artists and their crafts. More than that, you will find a deeper part of your soul, that eternal streak of childish imagination too many of us can't remember as adults.
Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter
Read More
How one professor and her classes are preserving Oxford’s Black history
By Sean Scott | March 20, 2024Jazma Sutton, an assistant professor of history, teaches The Black Midwest (HST 350Q) and Black Women in America (HST 450D) classes. In both courses, she has students working with the Smith Library of Regional History and Miami’s archives to document and preserve Black history in Oxford.
Miami faculty members recount Freedom Summer in new documentary
By Luke Macy | February 25, 2022After seven years of work, “Training for Freedom,” a documentary highlighting Oxford’s involvement in the Freedom Summer of 1964, premiered on PBS Western Reserve on Valentine’s Day.
“Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic”: History in the making
By Alice Momany | August 29, 2021In March 2020, Miami University’s archives launched “Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a collection focused on life during the COVID-19 pandemic.