The Arts can captivate.
Reaction to a work of art can connect us more deeply to the world and open us to new ways of seeing and experiencing the world.
The Arts can be a life-changing experience.
Artists provide us with an imaginative experience that is often a more intense, revealing, and meaningful version of actual experience. We gain a sense of deep fulfillment – a sense of awareness that includes the satisfaction associated with works of art that we might find deeply unsettling, disorienting, or tragic.
The Arts can expand our capacity for empathy.
A work of art, whether on canvas or on stage, can increase our compassion and our responsiveness – drawing us into the experiences of people from vastly different demographics and cultures and giving us a new understanding of their situations.
The Arts enhance our cognitive growth.
When we focus our attention on a work of art, we are “invited” to make sense of what is before us. We can gain an entirely new perspective on the world and our place in it.
The Arts create social connections
When people share the experience of works of art, either by discussing them or by collectively experiencing them, one of the intrinsic benefits is the communal bond that is created.
The Arts can express communal issues and concerns
When works of art convey what whole communities of people yearn to express, they can become a voice for groups that culture at large has largely ignored and become a way to change people’s views and perceptions.
Source: “Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate”, McCarthy K., 2004.
