• Welcome to the John Oliver Fine Arts Web Site.

The government won’t listen to just artists and arts organizations, but they will listen to you the voter.

By Dustin | Published: February 16, 2010

Dear friends of the arts, Simply click the link below and send an email letter automatically to Premier Gordon Campbell, Kevin Krueger, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Rich Coleman, Minister of Housing and Social Development, Colin Hansen, Minister of Finance, and by menu selection to your MLA.

http://allianceforarts.com/speak-out-about-bc-arts-cuts

Urge the government to accept the unanimous recommendations of  his Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services to restore provincial arts funding in BC to 2008-2009 levels (and forestall potential cuts of up to 90% in coming years). Ask them to Return the BC Arts Council Funding and the Direct Access gaming grants to 2008-09 levels; Restore the one-year funding commitments to arts and cultural organizations through the Gaming and Policy Enforcement Branch at the Ministry of Housing and Social Development (rescinded this year); Maintain the multi-year funding program beyond the current three-year commitments; Preserve the BC Arts Council’s arms-length relationship with the province by funding through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture & the Arts (not from gambling revenues). Please take a minute to do this.

The government won’t listen to just artists and arts organizations, but they will listen to you the voter.

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Tucson Schools Enhance Learning with the Arts

By Dustin | Published: November 29, 2009

Brain-based research supports an effort to improve student achievement through an interdisciplinary curriculum that combines creative pursuits and academic subjects.

At Corbett Elementary School, in Tucson, Arizona, classical music floats through the hallways all day. First graders and fifth graders create operas. Every fourth grader learns violin. Kindergartners meet weekly with a trio from the Tucson Symphony Orchestra to explore rhythm and patterns and to establish literacy connections.


Corbett is part of a sweeping initiative in the Tucson Unified School District to improve student achievement through an interdisciplinary curriculum that fuses the arts and academic subjects. The project, Opening Minds Through the Arts, is built on brain-based learning theories and research into children’s neurological development.

“OMA is not only opening up children to the beauty of the world, it’s also strengthening connections in the brain,” says Sheila Govern, principal of Lyons Elementary School. “OMA is different than just having music. It uses the integration of the arts to reinforce concepts that students are learning. It gives them the experience of those concepts through music or movement or art.”

When OMA began in three elementary schools in 2000-01, the Tucson Unified School District had little formalized elementary-level arts instruction beyond band and orchestra during the school day. “My goal was to get the arts in every elementary school,” says Joan Ashcraft, co-creator of OMA and its director of fine and performing arts. The program’s founders saw the arts as key to boosting student achievement and improving troubled schools. The program had an “angel” in H. Eugene Jones, who had earned a fortune turning around ailing companies and at age 84 began pouring his energies — and ultimately more than $1 million — into OMA. Two federal grants also helped fuel OMA’s early growth, but the project caught fire because of its results.

In the first three years, the nonprofit research firm WestEd tracked the OMA schools along with demographically matched controls: All six schools had high percentages of low-income students, English-language learners, and children of transient families. OMA students significantly outscored their counterparts in reading, math, and writing, and although the benefits held across all ethnicities, Hispanic students, in particular, made substantial gains in writing.

WestEd also found that teachers in OMA schools did better than their peers on every indicator, including lesson planning and design, arts-integrated instruction, and the creative use of varied learning activities. Today, 40 of Tucson’s more than 70 elementary schools have at least some elements of OMA. Pilot projects are under way at 4 of the district’s 20 middle schools. (Download PDFs of rubrics and other supplementary materials.)

Corbett, a Title I school with about 600 students, was one of the original OMA sites, and the program initially met resistance there. Teachers worried about sacrificing precious minutes in an already jammed day to music or dance, recalls Principal Joyce Dillon. “Now they say, ‘It’s so completely related to what we’re teaching. I never want to give it up.’”

At fully implemented OMA schools like Corbett, teaching artists — professionals from Tucson’s cultural institutions — work with students on activities that dovetail with the classroom curriculum and state standards. An arts-integration specialist on the school staff also sees every class each week.

Of course, nobody — least of all, kids — participates in art to test better. The arts attract us by the pleasure and emotional stimulation they offer, and on that score, OMA shines. “We get a lot of visitors, and what impresses them is the engagement of the kids,” Dillon says. “When kids are reading music or singing an opera, they’re very focused, they’re using the whole body, and their brains are making connections. There’s a richness it brings to learning.”

Fran Smith is a contributing editor for Edutopia.

This article was also published in the February 2009 issue of Edutopia magazine as “Opening Minds Through the Arts”.

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Without the arts, education’s grade is Incomplete.

By Dustin | Published: November 29, 2009

Education minus art? Such an equation equals schooling that fails to value ingenuity and innovation. The word art, derived from an ancient Indo-European root that means “to fit together,” suggests as much. Art is about fitting things together: words, images, objects, processes, thoughts, historical epochs.1

It is both a form of serious play governed by rules and techniques that can be acquired through rigorous study, and a realm of freedom where the mind and body are mobilized to address complex questions — questions that, sometimes, only art itself can answer: What is meaningful or beautiful? Why does something move us? How can I get you to see what I see? Why does symmetry provide a sense of pleasure?

Art is the cleverness of Odysseus; the intimate knowledge of materials in a sculpture by Renaissance master Benvenuto Cellini or a dress designed by Issey Miyake; the inventive genius of a Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, or computer visionary Douglas Engelbart; the verbal craft in everything from an aphorism (”Time is money”) to an oration (”Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation”) to a commercial slogan (”Just Do It”). In short, art isn’t to be found only in galleries and museums; it is woven into the warp and woof of an entire civilization.

To erase art, as the Taliban did by turning explosives on the colossal centuries-old Buddhas of Bamiyan along the ancient Silk Road through Afghanistan, is to deny the reality of human differences and historical change.

To oppose art, like the Nazi writer Hanns Johst does in his 1933 play Schlageter, which famously features the line “Whenever I hear the world culture . . . I release the safety on my Browning!” is to envisage the imaginative powers of the human mind as a threat to the public order (and, by extension, to enforce conformity to the familiar, the known, and the officially sanctioned).

Though omitting art from school curricula, whether because of budget or time constraints or censorship, is not on a par with pillaging the past or thwarting free expression, it does impoverish learning in ways that compromise the core subject areas routinely invoked as essential: reading, writing, and arithmetic. All three are coextensive with art — so much so as to be inseparable.

Reading involves navigating the cognitive complexities of books and an emerging cluster of new media that merge text, moving or still images, and sound. The basic ability to decode and make sense of arguments and narratives is just the starting point on a road that soon leads to a critical understanding of how, if, and when things rationally fit.

Writing is, of course, the active counterpart of reading, the ability to state arguments and create narratives and thereby master the rules of written communication. To say that even everyday writing isn’t an art is to accept the cliche that art refers exclusively to works of the fictional, visual, or musical imagination. And the all-inclusive art of writing now is expanding constantly to incorporate the communications revolution of the information age. For centuries following the invention of printing, writing still mostly meant applying pen to paper; now, any computer-equipped high schooler can be a typographer, a graphic designer, and a layout artist when completing a homework assignment. Information design has become the natural extension of crafting a well-honed message and a persuasive turn of phrase.

Last but by no means least, arithmetic: the domain of calculation and logic that undergirds the digital tools that are reshaping practices of reading and writing, not to mention a domain where the highest aspiration of a proof, formula, or algorithm is to be recognized as “beautiful.”

So, the question we are now facing is not one of “education minus art” versus “education plus art,” but, rather, what is the quality of the core skill set with which we hope to — and must — equip future generations? Will it be a tool kit designed for the performance of simple practical tasks? Or will it promote instead the sort of flexible, imaginative, and critical thinking that is required to grapple with the complex and ever-shifting challenges posed by the contemporary world? Will it limit its compass to the classroom? Or will it instead become a lifelong resource for personal growth and enrichment? Will it reduce the world of knowledge to what is readily quantifiable, or grant equal weight to that which can be measured only by the subtle yardstick of quality?

“Life is short, and art long,” reads the Hippocratic aphorism. And the endurance of art summons humankind to look beyond the immediate chores of our daily existences toward the far grander horizons of knowledge and growth.

Jeffrey T. Schnapp is director of the Stanford Humanities Lab at Stanford University, a prominent cultural historian of the 20th century, and a frequent curator of art exhibitions in Europe and the United States.

This article was also published in the February 2009 issue of Edutopia magazine as “The Question of Art”.

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The Arts Are Essential

By Dustin | Published: November 29, 2009

Cornell University’s president on why teaching creativity in schools is not a luxury.
by David J. Skorton
Credit: Getty Images
As president of a large research university that received 33,000 applications for 3,050 places in the fall freshman class, I’m often asked by parents of students in high school, middle school — and even those in preschool — what their children should study in the K-12 years to increase their chances of admission to college. I dutifully affirm the conventional wisdom: Take the most challenging courses in core academic disciplines like English, languages, history, math, and science for the required number of years, participate in extracurricular activities, volunteer . . . .
Then I put in a plea for taking time to explore the humanities and arts in all their varied dimensions — visual and performing, Western and non-Western, classical and avant-garde. Far from being mere adornments to educational development, easy to dismiss as nonessential in tight economic times, these disciplines nurture our creative instincts.
Although they do not always lend themselves to the kinds of metrics used to demonstrate proficiency in reading and math, the arts and humanities play a vital role in the educational development of students. They keep and convey our cultural heritage while opening us up to other societies and civilizations around the globe. They help us 1explore what it means to be human, including both the ethical and aesthetic dimensions. If science and technology help us to answer questions of “what” and “how,” the arts and humanities give us ways to confront the intangible, to contemplate the “why,” to imagine, to create. If ever there were a time to nurture those skills in our young people, it is now, when our nation’s future may depend on our creativity and our ability to understand and appreciate the cultures around the world as much as on our proficiency in reading and math.
The Heart of the Matter
Great research universities are often thought of in relation to their contributions to the advancement of science and technology. Biomedical inquiry and discovery are well established in universities, as are research in the physical and mathematical sciences and the social sciences. Yet liberal arts education is the heart of a university, and the humanities and arts comprise its soul.
As a physician and biomedical scientist, I consider the scientific method a specific application of epistemology that involves observation, formation of hypotheses, and testing of the hypotheses, and that includes ample helpings of deductive and inductive reasoning. (I have long given medical students in my clinics a copy of The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, a collection informed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s medical training; Holmes was reportedly modeled on a diagnostician from whom Doyle took instruction in medical school in Edinburgh.) Once scientific inquiry has occurred, the conclusions of discovery frequently lead to practical decisions that are, or should be, based on ethical or moral considerations. So, even in the hard sciences, philosophy, history, art, and literature play their role.
Given how much greater a role the arts and humanities play in their own right — the arts for arts’ sake — they certainly don’t need to be justified by their utility as servants of science. How unfortunate, then, that arts and humanities scholarship receives so little recognition and funding, and so infrequently finds its way into the national discourse.
Credit: iStockphoto
Play On
Take, for example, music, which has been an important part of my own life since my teen years. I worked as a rhythm and blues musician in the Chicago area to help pay my way at Northwestern University, where I earned my undergraduate and medical degrees, and I continue to make time for music.
Music as an art form is at once complex, evolving, up to the minute in its currency, and yet primal, basic, and eminently human. It is among the most universal of art forms, among the most organic of experiences. According to Michael Thaut in his book Rhythm, Music, and the Brain, “Throughout human history, music has been considered a form of communication. However, the nature of what and how music communicates has been the subject of long-standing and fascinating inquiries in philosophy, religion, the arts, and the sciences.”
Music is a communicator, a transducer of emotion, a stimulator of understanding — explicit or implicit. Music teaches in a way that we cannot replicate with words. Pedagogically complex, music transforms us, touches us alone or in a shared experience, whether planned or improvised. What of the place of plans and improvisation in art, in life? Can anything teach that point more clearly than music? The seamless juxtaposition of the planned and the extemporaneous — musician to musician, musician to audience, audience to musician — are vividly evident in the live act of creating and receiving.
Education is innately a forward-looking and optimistic enterprise. The investment in the preparation for teaching, in the moment, in the follow-up — all are intrinsically optimistic, optimistic that these efforts will bear fruit and that the fruit will be borne even by trees not yet planted, seeds not yet sown.2
There is growing evidence that arts education improves student learning and thereby produces better citizens. Throughout the United States, educational institutions — from local schools to community colleges to research universities — act as centers for public culture and for instilling in our children the values and knowledge that come only from a study of the humanities and the arts.
I believe deeply that arts education is of great value in and of itself, not only instrumentally; I believe just as emphatically that education in the arts is the business of all of us, from the home and the family to the neighborhood and the village, from the P-12 school system to higher education to lifelong learning, culminating in the great and defining legacy of our public culture.
David J. Skorton is president of Cornell University. This essay was adapted by the author from an address given at a 2007 forum, “Transforming Arts Teaching: The Role of Higher Education,” sponsored by the Dana Foundation.

This article was also published in the February 2009 issue of Edutopia magazine as “The Essential Arts”

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Why teach the arts? Art inspires learning

By Dustin | Published: November 29, 2009

Math and science may boost economic competitiveness, but art completes our education.

By David Arzouman
from the October 26, 2009 edition

TOKYO – When American presidents talk about education, they inevitably stress the need to focus on math and science. In a technological world, they say, math and science ultimately equate with economic competitiveness. This line of thinking may be smart politics, but it makes education merely the means to an economic end.

President Obama is no exception to this tendency. But as a candidate, he also routinely noted the importance of the arts, as does Education Secretary Arne Duncan. It is fair then to ask what art actually offers.

Science emphasizes quantities. Art emphasizes qualities. Their mix, although paradoxical, moves us closer to completeness. We express such paradox in ideals like the student-athlete, warrior-poet, compassionate-conservative, even “wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.”

The arts offer both a key educational component and the unique experience of handling each stage of a project – coordinating hand, eye, and mind – from inspiration to finishing touches. In contrast, business realities necessitate specialization.

Schools also practice specialization, both in the estrangement of various studies and by progressively narrowing the focus. Perhaps because expertise pays, it is not generally the case that the “higher” people go in education, the broader, more interconnected, integrated, and holistic becomes their vision.

If the arts provide an alternative metaphor applicable to education, it is that elements must balance and synergize. The attractive color, “catchy” musical passage, or favorite rhyme that doesn’t fit only weakens the work. With synergy, grayed colors combine into brilliant paintings, just as in sports a coordinated team beats an unsupported superstar.

We arrive at a dilemma. In groups, individuals play roles and specialize; completeness arises from the coordinated activity spanning the group. But if education’s defining goal is only preparing students for those roles, it suffers for balance.

So where is the education model that not only emphasizes balance, but also explores the parallels and connections across disciplines?

One example is the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy – a model that reaches back to Pythagoras. Consider its strengths. Arithmetic explains the relations between numbers. Geometry explains numbers in space; music, numbers in time; and astronomy, numbers in space and time. It was a vision of correspondences conducive to analogic thinking.

Our wiser cultural ancestors considered geometry more than an engineering tool and music more than mere entertainment. They were key, parallel studies, manifestations of numbers, which were therefore seen as embodying both quantity and quality, a clue to the complementary unity of science and art. Segregating the two, and regarding only one as essential, is a costly disintegration, expressing a quantitative bias necessary for technological expediency.

Admittedly, art is peripheral to making microchips or jumbo jets. But it’s important to distinguish what our technology gets us, and what it doesn’t. The technological gap between a smart bomb and a spear is vast. But the gap in intent can be imperceptible. Cable television, cellphones, and computers don’t ensure a more meaningful quality of discourse, only faster and more far-reaching. While our means far outrun anything from the past, our purpose and moral intent struggle to keep pace.

So, yes, education is vital to everything. But it requires an element of inspiration, and inspiration rides on metaphor, correspondences, and relating, the surprising and far-reaching connections that put the world back together, that elicit the “aha” response. This is precluded by over-specialization, but it just happens to be the work of art, whose root meaning is “to fit or join together.”

Thinking outside the box of each school department would be edifying. A math lesson might include rhythmic examples, or ratios also experienced as musical intervals. A geometry lesson could show how the master painters once ordered their compositions on geometric underpinnings.

Reopening these pathways would not bypass the traditional curriculum, but simply inspire the artist inside each student, longing to see the big picture. Unforeseen social benefits would surely follow.

David Arzouman is an artist, composer, writer, and educator developing a new art school in Tokyo.

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Under Construction

By Dustin | Published: November 22, 2009

Feel free to look around, but we are under construction…

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