Theme: Art in Action

In the opening section of his book Art In Action (1980), philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff wrestles with crucial issues, including the purpose, nature, and uses of art.

The way that art, in all its diverse forms, is used in culture - particularly Western culture - sends a clear message about what we believe art's purpose to be - first looked at, listened to, or read, and then simply contemplated. Concert halls, museums, galleries, universities, literary journals, and other artistic venues reinforce this idea, leading us to believe that the art's defining goal is aesthetic contemplation - nothing more, nothing less.

However, aesthetic contemplation cannot be art's only purpose. Products of creative artistic disciplines are integrated into the fabric of our existence, but art's value to humankind runs much deeper than aesthetics.

Humanity longs to sing and dance, and it needs choreographers and kappellmeisters to instruct and inspire. Humanity longs to be part of a great story, to write a chapter in it, but it needs great storytellers to point the way. Humanity longs to truly see unseen things, pictures of worlds in and beyond it, but it needs visionaries to open eyes. Humanity needs artists, and artists need humanity.

The axiom of the United States National Endowment for the Arts is "a great nation deserves great art". And it does. We want to take that even further, because IAM believes that all humans deserve great art as a prevalent part of daily life - in newspapers and magazines, doctors' offices and the workplace, homes, museums, concert halls, places of worship, clubs, subways, city streets, parks . . . everywhere.

Creation and creativity are part of what makes people human. If we hope to see more evidence of the world that ought to be, we must fill all corners of culture - museums to malls, galleries to grocery stores - with good, true and beautiful works. This is Art in Action.