Published: October 06, 2008 04:56 pm      

We must support and fund the arts

Since October is Arts and Humanities Month, and we are so busy with the coming election, with perhaps little time to devote to what I consider a very important issue, I wanted to bring the Arts to the attention of your readers.

My friend, colleague, and president of the American Orchestra League, Henry Fogel, recently wrote: “I see a growing climate of anti-intellectualism in America, and with it a lowering of the place of the arts on the national agenda. There is today a serious distortion of values in the world — a set of values that puts the short term ahead of the long term, that puts financial achievement ahead of ethical standards, and that minimizes the worth of intellectual achievement and of human expression.

“ In truth, when future generations look back and judge the civilizations and societies of the past, it is first and foremost the cultural and artistic achievements of those societies that are spoken of. Whether it is Homer, Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Picasso, James Baldwin, Garcia Lorca, or Leonard Bernstein — the artists and the art they created express the deepest and most profound thoughts of the civilizations in which they lived and worked. The achievements of those artists, in fact, define civilizations, define humanity.”

The great playwright Arthur Miller may well have put it best: “When the cannons have stopped firing, and the great victories of finance are reduced to surmise and are long forgotten, it is the art of the people that will confront future generations. The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all the wars, the armaments, and the threats and warnings of the politicians.”

We must continue to support and fund the Arts!

Pat Feuchtenberger

Bluefield, VA