Art appreciation

Learning to value the aesthetic experience

Just over years ago, James Brown prevented a riot in downtown Boston.

Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. That night, angry riots spread through large cities across the country. Rocks flew and glass shattered in Boston, too, but the violence -- largely in the South End and Roxbury -- did not boil out of control.

But Kevin White's City Hall worried that, as the horror of Memphis settled in, the violence would turn far worse. A stroke of genius hit: persuade WGBH and James Brown, in town that night for a show, to work together and broadcast the performance live. That famous concert brought the city together, allowing it to mourn, and to rage, on another plane.

It's a night to remember as the city debates the rightful place of art in civic life. It's a reminder of a simple fact that usually gets lost when politics and aesthetics mix: art is as mysterious, and as essential, as it is powerful.

One of the more hopeful signs is the return of the arts to the classroom. In cities across the country, school systems are beginning to revamp arts budgets gutted over the last two decades. Here in Boston, the school board has expanded arts programs systemwide, and the Boston Arts Academy, the city's first high school for the performing arts, will finally be a reality.

But, as Yvonne Abraham wrote last week, Boston's commitment to the arts is still halfhearted and, more important, not permanent (see "Unfinished Symphony," News, June 26). If there is another economic downturn, there is every reason to think the arts will, again, be savaged. The same could be said for the nation as a whole; arts funding follows the capricious booms and busts of the economy.

What is missing from the public debate is an appreciation of art's inherent worth. Politicians are comfortable citing the research that shows music training helps with math skills, or that drama class bolsters reading comprehension. But they usually grow quiet, shy almost, when it comes to articulating what art actually means to people.

When a child brings home a paper splashed with colors, the parents don't think of spatial skills; they feel wonder at the creation.

Art is an essential part of understanding what it means to be alive. What else could express the range of intense emotions in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet? What else could capture the grief, and the terror of death and madness, in Hamlet? Or the life-affirming power of African dance? Masters -- whether painters or poets -- have the power to literally change the way you see the world, to bring out the sublime details that otherwise slip by unnoticed.

There is no reason for art to be treated as a world apart. Some Saturday, as the sun sets, head down to Providence, a city that has made a point of welcoming and nurturing the arts. As twilight comes, small bonfires are set in metal urns that float along the river. As the light fades, the air is filled with choral music and the incense from burning wood. A crowd gathers, milling slowly up and down the river, crossing the bridges. The stars come out and people keep walking well into the night.

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