Along the labyrinthine corridors behind Boler gym you can find the Band room, and if you climb the secret stairway off the Querbes hallway you enter into the Art room; in both, however, students supplement their studies with an arts education, fostering creativity through performance and expression. While for many contemplating the “Arts” may conjure esoteric philosophies, brobdingnagian diction, and ostentatious expositions, we consume art and the “Arts” across all media, and quite commonly in our daily life.
For example, many famous movies make use of classical music to accompany serious moments, such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” when Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries” accentuates the helicopter assault of Kilgore, or comedic moments, like when circuses borrow Julius Fučík’s “Entry of the Gladiators” as a hilarious soundtrack for clowns. Even outside of established media, certain works of art become so ingrained into cultural memory that few could lack knowledge of them like da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” or van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”
Considering art so integral to culture, art education understandably provides great benefit to its students. Of perhaps the most profound impact, creativity spurred by the study of art—literary, aural, and visual—invigorates the imagination and propagates the creation and expression of art in all its myriad forms. Of note, Dr. Seuss’s famous line holds especially true here: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” By studying art, through reading and listening, we better enable ourselves to learn and create, thus contributing to the continuation of art. Besides teaching creativity, an arts education also contributes to our intellectual development. By analyzing literature, comparing paint colors, and generating musical variations we gain valuable insights into how we learn and work; certainly, this knowledge of learning applies down the road in humanities careers, but it likewise applies in business and STEM. Furthermore, the arts perpetually stand as an outlet from our normal mode of life, and in this we find their greatest legacy.
By providing such benefits, like fostering creativity, in a free and limitless discipline the arts become accessible to all simply because they show us the world through the eyes of others. Never will the arts—or arts education—follow the long road West from the world, so long as the desire to listen and be heard persists.