Report on White House Briefing On Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery 12 May 2009, Eisenhower Executive Office Building

WH Briefing Report 6-3-09

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What is art for?

This NYTimes article on the work of Lewis Hyde introduces us to a great thinker in the arts who should be considered in conversations related to the creative economy, the development of 'genius', and issues related to cultural commons vs copyright.

“It takes a capacious mind to play host to … others and to find new ways to combine what they have to offer,” Hyde writes, “but not a mind for whom there are no masters, not a ‘unique.’ Quite the opposite — this is a mind willing to be taught, willing to be inhabited, willing to labor in the cultural commons.”

"... the predicament of all artists living “in an age whose values are market values and whose commerce consists almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities.” For centuries people have been speaking of talent and inspiration as gifts; Hyde’s basic argument was that this language must extend to the products of talent and inspiration too. Unlike a commodity, whose value begins to decline the moment it changes hands, an artwork gains in value from the act of being circulated—published, shown, written about, passed from generation to generation — from being, at its core, an offering."