Democratic Vistas editor's statement
Of Art & Democratic Values
by Michael P. Wakeford
What we set out do was to find great writers to tell great stories about artists and leaders who work where the arts and democracy meet. What holds these essays together is a sense that their subjects, though infinitely diverse in the details, live and work somewhere out there on that "democratic vista,” Walt Whitman’s hopeful horizon comprised of the arts, the swirling complexity of American communities, and the promise of the good society. This series makes no claim that one dimension of the arts has a greater hold on democratic values than any other. We have our sympathies. But inescapably, each writer and each reader will, too.
The pairing of "art and democracy," a familiar one in contemporary culture, was not always self-evident. As often as not, the arts and culture have been seen as a bastion of privilege to be insulated from the public world, rather than as an essential contributor to a healthy civic realm, or as an arena where principles of universal access, equal opportunity, or popular opinion may prevail. In fact, early calls to broaden arts experience emerged from a fear of democracy and diversity, and the hope that the arts and culture could “cultivate” the waves of new immigrants filling American cities and voting booths.
These sentiments endure in significant ways, but new understandings of how the arts and democratic values resonate have competed with them in the last century. Hunger for authentic "American" artistic identity has bred a variety of cultural hybrids that draw on informal, folk, and popular practices and aesthetics. Artists deliberately smudged the sharp divide between art, commerce and entertainment. Reformers and educators redrew associations of the arts with social uplift and linked arts education to the formation of freethinking and expressive citizens. A vibrant artistic culture began to be understood as both cause and effect of a free and democratic society. This partly explains the intimate relationship between the arts and the democratic movements of the last half of the century as well as the emergence of unprecedented philanthropic and official arts support via the national endowments for the arts and humanities.
Artists are key contributors to American democracy and the arts’ own capacity for self-criticism and renewal. Many seek to make room for a plethora of voices in American culture, ensure access for all and equity within cultural workplaces, and enrich artists’ relationships with communities.
Whitman's "democratic vista" has drawn nearer, and we have chosen to examine it through these stories of explorers who are charting the terrain and claiming territory out there at the blue horizon line. Our subjects are often visionary souls who share a profound belief, a faith in the arts and democracy as mutually sustaining practices and ideals. Our writers were not asked to write profiles in courage, though. They were asked to tell us about human beings who engage the complexity and the contradictions of both the arts and democracy in particular contexts – an art form, a place, a community, a history. In some significant way, each of them is reshaping a part of the world – from Las Vegas to Providence, from the human genome to urban planning – and making connections between people, experiences, and ideas where none existed before. The intersection of the arts and democracy is so rich that we expect to draw something different from each profile.
We hope you enjoy the series, and will return many times as it continues!
Michael Wakeford, Editor
Democratic Vistas Profiles
Michael Wakeford is a PhD candidate in United States cultural history at the University of Chicago. He researches and writes on the arts, education, and democratic thought in American life.
by Michael P. Wakeford
What we set out do was to find great writers to tell great stories about artists and leaders who work where the arts and democracy meet. What holds these essays together is a sense that their subjects, though infinitely diverse in the details, live and work somewhere out there on that "democratic vista,” Walt Whitman’s hopeful horizon comprised of the arts, the swirling complexity of American communities, and the promise of the good society. This series makes no claim that one dimension of the arts has a greater hold on democratic values than any other. We have our sympathies. But inescapably, each writer and each reader will, too.
The pairing of "art and democracy," a familiar one in contemporary culture, was not always self-evident. As often as not, the arts and culture have been seen as a bastion of privilege to be insulated from the public world, rather than as an essential contributor to a healthy civic realm, or as an arena where principles of universal access, equal opportunity, or popular opinion may prevail. In fact, early calls to broaden arts experience emerged from a fear of democracy and diversity, and the hope that the arts and culture could “cultivate” the waves of new immigrants filling American cities and voting booths.
These sentiments endure in significant ways, but new understandings of how the arts and democratic values resonate have competed with them in the last century. Hunger for authentic "American" artistic identity has bred a variety of cultural hybrids that draw on informal, folk, and popular practices and aesthetics. Artists deliberately smudged the sharp divide between art, commerce and entertainment. Reformers and educators redrew associations of the arts with social uplift and linked arts education to the formation of freethinking and expressive citizens. A vibrant artistic culture began to be understood as both cause and effect of a free and democratic society. This partly explains the intimate relationship between the arts and the democratic movements of the last half of the century as well as the emergence of unprecedented philanthropic and official arts support via the national endowments for the arts and humanities.
Artists are key contributors to American democracy and the arts’ own capacity for self-criticism and renewal. Many seek to make room for a plethora of voices in American culture, ensure access for all and equity within cultural workplaces, and enrich artists’ relationships with communities.
Whitman's "democratic vista" has drawn nearer, and we have chosen to examine it through these stories of explorers who are charting the terrain and claiming territory out there at the blue horizon line. Our subjects are often visionary souls who share a profound belief, a faith in the arts and democracy as mutually sustaining practices and ideals. Our writers were not asked to write profiles in courage, though. They were asked to tell us about human beings who engage the complexity and the contradictions of both the arts and democracy in particular contexts – an art form, a place, a community, a history. In some significant way, each of them is reshaping a part of the world – from Las Vegas to Providence, from the human genome to urban planning – and making connections between people, experiences, and ideas where none existed before. The intersection of the arts and democracy is so rich that we expect to draw something different from each profile.
We hope you enjoy the series, and will return many times as it continues!
Michael Wakeford, Editor
Democratic Vistas Profiles
Michael Wakeford is a PhD candidate in United States cultural history at the University of Chicago. He researches and writes on the arts, education, and democratic thought in American life.
