By: Jordan Banks

Jordan Banks — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:17:03 +0000

I wholeheartedly agree with the main premise of this blog: cultural agency as a catalyst for social change. It is so important to have art programs in schools for young children to especially learn how to express themselves through artistic outlets. People are not only self-expressive and creative, but also are able to communicate their points of view on a specific matter to the general public. One particular area Sommer touches upon is FDR’s policies in supporting art education and commissioned pieces. This is especially important because artists such as Norman Rockwell, whose paintings inspired Americans to believe in the American Dream, would not be able to shine. To me, the arts contribute to cultural agency as a form of documentation. Fine art, music, drama, literature, and film are just a few that give people endless ways to document historic events, lives, and people’s emotions and reactions of a particular time period. Without artifacts like these, museum curators would be out of a job bringing primary sources to the public about lives and events past. Some of these works can foreshadow edgy trends that are ahead of its time. Andy Warhol’s movie Empire, for example, documents the sky changing behind the Empire State Building for eight hours. Sounds boring—but the reading of this film could be Warhol’s broad premise of documenting life itself, as it goes by in measurements of time. This is something very avant-garde for the 1960s as most documentaries focus on a specific event or institution. Finally, I can understand Sommer’s case of urging humanists to be apart of cultural agency; they give an academic perspective. Their perspective does not only help us understand the premises of artists’ work, but also understand how art has helped people understand history.

Comments on: Humanists as cultural agents

By: Jordan Banks