Recently, I attended the opening of the exhibit American ABC: Childhood in 19th-Century America at the Cantor Arts Center. The exhibit, developed by a Stanford curator, Claire Perry, includes paintings of childhood by distinguished American artists such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. The works of art were organized into a set of galleries that evoked the one-room schoolhouse of that century. The paintings embodied such American themes as freedom, the outdoors and the exuberance of childhood. Among the curator’s notes were snippets from child-rearing guides and schoolbooks of the era; the freedom of childhood celebrated in the paintings was in stark contrast with the rigid upbringing and social structure recommended in the guides on raising children. This wonderful show closes this month and will travel to Washington, D.C., where it will be one of two special exhibits celebrating the reopening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum on July 1, 2006.
Stanford has long embraced the goal of producing “cultured and useful” citizens. As we approach the intellectual challenges of the next few decades, the arts will play an increasing role in helping our students learn how to be creative thinkers and to better understand the diversity and ambiguity of human societies. The arts are experiential and tap into ways of knowing and thinking that are not linear and often not verbal. Thus, they offer powerful and sophisticated ways of asking questions and exploring boundaries.
Last spring I announced that we would develop an arts initiative to enhance the quality and range of our programs in the arts. Jonathan Berger, associate professor of music, and Bryan Wolf, the Jeanette and William Hayden Jones Professor in American Art and Culture and professor by courtesy of English, have led the planning effort, which this past fall was expanded to include a number of pilot programs. One of the goals of the initiative is to increase opportunities for our students to experience art and its creation through a variety of residency programs. During the winter quarter, members of the New York Public Theater spent several weeks on campus developing a new dramatic and musical work called Passing Strange, which was performed in March. Students and faculty had the chance to see the final product as well as the process of its creation. In addition to these performances and residency programs, we have recently introduced a film and media studies program in the department of art and art history. This complements our outstanding graduate program in documentary film and responds to a strong interest among our students to explore film as a critical media.
A second focus of the initiative is arts, sciences and technologies. The newly formed Hasso Plattner Institute of Design brings the artistic and creative aspects of design together with the engineering and technology aspects. World-renowned designer David Kelley leads the new institute, which aims to better understand great design, how to develop “design thinking” and how to enhance our educational offerings in design. This is only one place where technology and creativity come together. In computer graphics, researchers use technology to create and explore new forms of artistic expression, from creating photorealistic artificial images to using technologies to create three-dimensional images.
A third area of focus is the arts in a global society, which recognizes the importance of art as a means of cross-cultural communication. For five years, the Stanford Irvine Institute for Diversity in the Arts, an interdisciplinary program in the humanities funded by the James Irvine Foundation, has brought artists to campus for programs that explore questions of diversity, race and identity. This winter, for example, Stan Lai, who has created improvisational theater for more than 20 years in Taiwan, worked with students to fashion Stories of the Dead, in which audience and actors switched roles. Each year, a variety of programs bring distinguished international performers to campus.
Last fall, 1,500 undergraduates, including many freshmen, attended an evening of arts, music and drama at the Cantor Arts Center designed to familiarize students with the opportunities to attend and participate in the arts at Stanford. This fall, for the first time, we will distribute a CD about opportunities for experiencing the arts to all incoming freshmen.
In his last letter to President David Starr Jordan, Leland Stanford wrote, “The imagination needs to be cultivated and developed to assure success in life.” This is no less true today, and Stanford must continue to be a pioneer as it explores the connection between the creative imagination and the possibilities of intellectual exploration and discovery.
