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Visual Arts and Human Flourishing brings together thoughtful and innovative thinkers from various visual arts fields such as art history, architecture, public art, and museums, to examine visual arts' relationship to flourishing, well-being, and happiness from the ancient world to the present day. The volume is part of the interdisciplinary series
The Humanities and Human Flourishing.
List of contents
- Introduction: Flourishing and the Visual Arts
- Part I Art for Well-Being? Artists and Art Historians
- Chapter 1: Kate Ingold: "Art," "Well-Being," and Questions Without Answers
- Chapter 2: Enrique Martínez Celaya: Rilke's Crocodile Tears: Art, Change, Being, and Human Flourishing
- Chapter 3: Larry Silver: Visual Art as Harmony and Challenge
- Chapter 4: Andy Campbell: All Artists Are Poor: Notes Toward a Polemic
- Part II Serving the Public: Public Art Communities, Architecture, and Art Museums
- Chapter 5: Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F Senie: Public Art and the Power of Engagement
- Chapter 6: Faya Causey: Amber: The Magic Rubs Off
- Chapter 7: Kulapat Yantrasast: A Frame for Human Flourishing: Notes Toward a New Architecture of Participation
- Chapter 8: Steven Fine: "Well-Being" and "Flourishing" in the Ancient Synagogue: Art, Vision, and the Experience of Holiness
- Chapter 9: Elliot Bostwick Davis: Art Museums as Catalysts for Human Flourishing: Creating New Metrics of Success
- Chapter 10: Selma Holo: A Meditation: In Search of a Deeper Flourishing for the Art Museum as Institution
About the author
Selma Holo is the Executive Director of USC Museums, as well as a Professor of Art History at Emerita University of Southern California.
Summary
Visual Arts and Human Flourishing brings together thoughtful and innovative thinkers from various visual arts fields such as art history, architecture, public art, and museums, to examine visual arts' relationship to flourishing, well-being, and happiness from the ancient world to the present day. From the poetic musings of exiled Cuban artist Enrique Martinez Celaya, to the practical utopianism of Kulapat Yantrassast as he tries to rescue architecture from the coldness of Modernism; from the musings of Steven Fine about the decorative arts in ancient synagogues in creating community and meaning, to Faya Causey's analysis of the role of amber in celebrations and rituals over the millennia, and throughout the many other chapters of the book as a whole, the contributors examine how visual arts have promoted expansive expressions of an ever more flourishing and thriving humanity.
The essays in this volume, part of The Humanities and Human Flourishing series, demonstrate how the process of thinking, writing, creating, and general curiosity about visual art can play a vital role in human flourishing.
