Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life/The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State

Abstract

Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life. Edited by Steven J. Tepper and Bill Ivey. (New York: Routledge, 2007. Pp. viii + 398, acknowledgments, introduction, tables, graphs, figures, chapter notes, chapter bibliographies, contributors, index. $125.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.); The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State. Edited by Casey Nelson Blake. (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Pp. xvi + 362, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustrations, chapter notes, contributors, index. $49.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.)Is public art in the United States in afin de siecle or a renaissance? Two new anthologies provide ample means for reflection upon its past, present, and future: Engaging Art, edited by Steven J. Tepper and Bill Ivey, and The Arts of Democracy, edited by Casey Nelson Blake. Both volumes address the "[v]igorous argument about the public life of artistic experience" (Blake 2). The sociologists whose essays appear in Tepper and Ivey's collection examine "arts participation" in the twentieth century, from active to passive, and (they argue) back again. The historians and sociologists of Blake's collection take the concept to a more abstract plane as they consider the role of art and culture in "the State." Both collections are recommended to folklorists, especially as we imagine how the policies of our recently inaugurated President and his policies may influence arts and culture.Engaging Art addresses two fundamental questions: "I) What is the state of cultural participation and engagement in the United States; and 2) How is participation changing?" (Tepper 364) . Commissioned to examine statistics and explore implications of the NEA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, the volume explores the impact of the arts on the lives of Americans. The contributors provide an extensive historical overview of arts participation in the United States; employ quantitative and qualitative resources to illustrate growth and decline in major arts disciplines; and introduce discussions about art making, art consumption, and choice.Section Two, Investigating Non-traditional Audiences, Places, and Art Forms, explores arts participation in everyday life, focusing on religious groups, immigrant communities, and youth. Tepper and Ivey note that these constituencies are vigorous arts participants who blur the lines between audiences and artists. (This blurring, and its impact upon numbers, was illustrated when the present reviewers attended Tepper's September 2008 lecture in Chattanooga at a national meeting of state arts agency workers, in which some of those present lamented decreases in participation in fine-arts productions; shortly afterwards we squeezed into a packed concert of local old-time and bluegrass musicians. The juxtaposition highlighted for us key differences in definition of the terms audience, artist, and participation.) An important argument throughout Engaging Art is that technology has forever changed our understanding of participation. In Section Three, New Technology and Cultural Change, the essayists note that new technologies create new audiences, provide portals to lesser-known works of art, and encourage social-network sharing. Technology also fosters a return to what Ivey calls "homemade art." A powerful and relatively inexpensive tool for the dissemination of work by non-professional artists, technology can increase choices for both artists and consumers. Still, not all potential participants may benefit equally; in the arts, as elsewhere, the digital divide persists.In Engaging Art we did not see folk arts addressed specifically, though Robert Wuthnow's essay "Faithful Audiences: The Intersection of Art and Religion" and Jennifer C. Lena and Daniel B. Cornfield's "Immigrant Arts Participation" are welcome illustrations, familiar to folklorists, of the book's explosive definition of "arts participation. …