What is the Value of Art in a Society

By 1990 Voice of Fire had for two years been on loan and hanging, without public fuss, in the National Gallery. Then news broke that the gallery had bought the painting for $1.76 million and, well, sacre bleu et rouge! “My kids could paint that” was a refrain heard frequently and Federal politicians played to their base constituencies by demanding that something should be done, while writers of letters to the editor dismissed the painting on the basis of, “I don’t like it, therefore it cannot be art.”

The National Gallery of Canada installed a massive bronze spider, Maman, by its front doors at a cost of $3.2 million, the gallery's most expensive purchase ever. Controversy swirled around as in the past but rather than being concerned about gallery-goers turning into Miss Muffets, the Director of the National Art Gallery said the giant spider is already doing what it's supposed to do – inspire people to talk about art. Then there was Montreal artist Jana Sterbak's “Vanitas”, better known as the 50-pound, "meat dress" of flank steak that the gallery displayed in 1991. Voices of protest again arose.

These type of stories become the headlines of the media world and leave one with the impression that some kinds of art are not “art” and secondly leads to debates about should art be funded by governments. In Ontario the recent government has been making reductions to art institutions and reducing funding for arts education in schools.

So is art really necessary in our society today? What do we mean by “art”? What value does encouraging, funding, supporting the flourishing of art bring to an individual and the broader society? Is it worth the investment? If yes who should be supporting art? If not, what are the consequences?

Our discussion will delve into these questions.

Attached are links to a variety of articles that bring differing views on the value of Art:

1. Why is Art Important - The Value of Creative Expression;
   https://artincontext.org/why-is-art-important/

2. To Fund or Not to Fund
   https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2017/10/26/to-fund-or-not-to-fund/

3. Ten Good Reasons to Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts
   https://www.heritage.org/report/ten-good-reasons-eliminate-funding-the-national-endowment-orthe-arts

4. 14 Pros and Cons of Cutting Art Programs in Schools
   https://connectusfund.org/14-pros-and-cons-of-cutting-art-programs-in-schools

5. Should the Arts be Publicly Funded?
   A dialogue between Owais Lightwala and Colin Craig
   https://albertaviews.ca/arts-publicly-funded/

6. Philosophy and Art
   https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s05.html#:~:text=Like%20philosophy%2C%20art%20also%20has,cognitive%2C%20moral%20and%20social%20substance.

This next article is a rather longer academic assessment of the value of art. As they state in their overview: they argue that a systematic neuroscientific study of art appreciation must move beyond understanding aesthetics alone, and toward investigating the social importance of art appreciation. Not a light read....
7) What Is Art Good For? The Socio-Epistemic Value of Art
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5581397/