Learning.
Why do arts professionals object to using the L word when it comes to describing the audience experience?
That’s one of the questions I take away from a recent five-week cross-country road trip, during which I visited (experienced) various arts organizations and met with a range of arts workers. I’ll explore other questions (thoughts, musings, puzzlements, sparks) from my journey in coming posts, but this one has pushed its way to the top.
I’ve been trying to parse the unpleasant reaction—from a number of smart, seasoned arts people—to my use of the word “learning” to describe what happens to us when we experience a work of art. (By experience I mean when we are in the moment of reception inside the concert hall or the gallery and when we are engaged in interpreting that reception.)
On one level the answer is obvious: in our culture “learning” denotes mental work (over spontaneous reaction). And it connotes cold objectivity (over emotional intuition). Since the arts-going experience is supposed to be emotional, over-laying it with an educational term seems like a buzzkill.
But I hear the word learning differently. I take my cue from the philosophy and rhetoric of the liberal arts, an educational tradition celebrating and nurturing human freedom. The word “liberal” derives from the Latin word liber, meaning “free,” the Old English word leodan, meaning “to grow,” and the Sanskrit word rodhati, meaning “one climbs” or “one grows.”
Here’s a reflection on this equation between the audience experience and the values of the liberal arts from my book, Audience Engagement and the Role of Arts Talk in the Digital Era:
What do we want from our audiences? Beyond ticket sales and subscription commitments, what is it that we are seeking from the intimate exchange at the core of the artist/arts event/audience triad? For many arts workers, the answer is simple: We want to connect. We want our audiences to respond both emotionally and intellectually to our work. We want our audiences to happily partake in the nuance and complexity of our artistic endeavor. We want them, finally, to revel in this meaningful exchange between one human and another. I am reminded here of a passage from E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End in which the novelist equates the fundamental power of love to our ability to connect with the human activity that surrounds us. “Only connect!,” Forster writes. “Only connect, the prose and the pas- sion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.” In his fine essay on the values of a liberal arts education, William Cronon muses on Forster’s charge, noting that a liberal education is about “gaining the power and the wisdom, the generosity and the freedom to connect.” “Liberal” in this context properly means of or pertaining to freedom. It also connotes dignity, honor, generosity, and bounty. According to educational administrator Christopher B. Nelson, liberal learning is distinguishable from utilitarian learning because it “helps us understand what a good life might look like, in order that we might live it well.” To live well (that is, ethically and with full engagement), a liberally educated person must have the capacity to engage in Socratic self-examination, asking “Who am I?” in relation to the surrounding world.
The implications for arts audiences are obvious: Knowing oneself is a necessary first component of any engagement process, and understanding what a good life looks like—one filled with authentic human expression—is fundamental to the arts instinct in all societies.
Audiences too are liberal learners, engaged in a process of making sense of the world through their connection with the arts event unfolding in front of them and with the community that surrounds it, artists and fellow audience members alike. People who experience the arts as learners find opportunities for critical and imaginative thinking, learn how to exercise and defend their own aesthetic judgments, and revel in their capacity to feel, to think, to communicate, to wonder and ponder, to share, to listen, and, perhaps, to collaborate toward the common good.
This blog post is makes for a good juxtaposition for David Gelernter’s Wall Street Journal essay from March 20, 2015 “Music Education Needs to Be a Click Away.”
It’s sad to read how much Yale students know about classical music:
“For most young people, music is a minor consumable, like toothpaste. Musicians and music majors aside, my students at Yale—and there are no smarter, more eager, more open students anywhere—just barely know who Beethoven is. Beethoven. “He composed music”—that is the general consensus.
To know nothing about Beethoven? That is cultural bankruptcy. That is collapse. It goes far beyond incompetence, deep into betrayal and farce.
“Why should we know anything about Beethoven?” The question was asked in all seriousness by a sophomore just a few months ago.”
“Why should we know anything about Beethoven?” asks the Yale sophomore in 2015.
“To know nothing about Beethoven? That is cultural bankruptcy. That is collapse. It goes far beyond incompetence, deep into betrayal and farce,” rails the professor in a newspaper column.
Prof. Gelertner is lucky that the student stayed to listen to his answer – “because no one has ever said anything deeper about what it means to be human, to look life and death in the eye, to know beauty at its purest and most intense” – and accepted it, rather than muttering “Sheesh, get over yourself,” and walking away.
The answer Prof. Gelertner gave is (arguably) spot-on, but It would strike many people as overwrought or self-important.
We may have to consider the possibility that, in 2015, for even a very bright U.S. college student to ask, “”Why should we know anything about Beethoven?” isn’t much different from asking “Why should we know anything about Balzac?” or “Why should we know anything about Ibsen?” or “Why should we know anything about J.M.W. Turner?” – all great artists who transformed their art forms about as much as Beethoven transformed his, and all of whose names will be only vaguely familiar to a whole lot of smart, educated Americans.
Lynne, the way you hear the word learning is interesting and even edifying, but thinking about the word that way with respect to the arts is a luxury you (as a tenured professor) have that most of the arts professionals who reacted badly to the word probably don’t.
The obvious answer – buzzkill – is probably the correct one.
Most of those arts professionals have to get butts into seats – paying butts – or face, ultimately, the potential loss of their livelihoods. And to most of the possessors of those butts, the word learning does not equate to fun or even fascination.
The word learning, on a very basic level in most folks’ minds, equates to school. And (unless they have to do so for the sake of their own livelihoods), most possessors of butts prefer not to return to school once they’ve finished with it.
This would be, for instance, why the TED people use the name TED Talks and not TED Lectures.
Yes, of course, many, many people actually do want to learn all through their lives, which is why they go to
lecturestalks or museum tours or walking tours or whatever.Many people also want to eat well-prepared butternut squash or braised asparagus or roasted sweet potatoes or caramelized brussels sprouts with bacon or fresh tomatoes. But if you tell them to eat their vegetables, most of those same people won’t respond well.
That would be why most arts professionals concerned about attracting anything more than a tiny audience would act like they were allergic to the word learning.
MWNyc, I’m one of the “arts professionals” you refer to. I have never reacted badly to the “Learning” word. First of all, it is because I long ago realized that I will be learning something for the rest of my life. Indeed, I MUST keep learning something for the rest of my life, for the moment anyone stops learning, they die. If not physically, then intellectually.
I therefore happily keep learning not just about music (my particular field of expertise), but about visual arts, literature, politics, history, etc., etc., etc. Again, one of the things I realized a long time ago that has kept me interested in learning for pleasure as opposed to just professional development, is that the arts are interrelated with their zeitgeist. And any artwork’s zeitgeist influences its character, interpretation and understanding. Sure, we can “understand” Beethoven from our point of view today and even make sense of his music. But that was not the way he was understood while he was alive, nor, perhaps, the way he wanted to be understood.
In practical terms, for performance artists, biographers, art historians, art appreciation teachers and anyone who truly wants to appreciate any kind of art, this means that looking at an artist who lived 200, 100 or even 50 years ago without learning about his/her zeitgeist means that you’re looking at an artwork the way Plato describes looking at reality in the proverbial cave with a fire in The Republic: All you see is a shadow.
If one stops learning about art or anything else that one may have the opportunity to learn about, one stops having the kind of fun and fascination I believe you are talking about. It’s the kind of stuff that is part of good times in life.
I pity any arts professional – indeed any sentient being – who decides s/he doesn’t want/have to learn any more. The punishment is in the deed. That’s why I think Ms. Conner’s blog post hits the nail on the head.
Tony, you write eloquently about the value of lifelong learning and the countless riches it can provide. And I certainly can’t argue with you on the point that arts professionals shouldn’t feel put off the the word learning with respect to themselves.
But, as an arts professional, do you find that using the word learning when dealing with potential audience members helps attract them to your (or your organization’s) work?
As a meditation on the nature of learning, Lynne’s post does indeed it the nail on the head.. Beautifully.
But she asks, at the very top of the post, ‘Why do arts professionals object to using the L word when it comes to describing the audience experience?”
I think the answer is, as Lynne said in passing, obvious: buzzkill, as she puts it.
I think that, in anything having to do with audiences, the arts professionals who need to attract said audiences want to avoid anything that smacks of school (or, worse, educational television) in regular folks’ minds.
I have never objected to the use of the word “learning” in the arts organizations I’ve worked with. Au contraire, I have always tried to explain to my boards that classical music, being perhaps the most abstract of all arts by being nonverbal as absolute music, actually REQUIRES a degree of learning for an audience member to be able to understand it. Anybody can understand a book, a sculpture or a painting on the surface of it and form a personal opinion. Music without words is much more puzzling to most people, especially if it’s a style of music they haven’t been brought up with or experience with their peers.
There is nothing wrong with that in my opinion. I have elderly family members who can’t figure out how computers work. I tell them to try to study and learn a bit about how they work; then they’ll be able to build on some initial learning with experimenting and understanding through trial and error. Personally, I didn’t touch a “computer” until I was 26, yet I was still able to develop super user skills in most Microsoft and Adobe programs within a few years after putting in a bit of effort to understand the basics by reading up on them (I’m not bragging; I’m anonymous, so it would have no purpose). My elderly relatives keep repeating they’re too old to learn and hence – proving the obvious – they’re unable to learn anything.
If you’re dealing with audiences like my elderly relatives, then there is of course no hope that they’ll ever learn. I happen to think that younger people today are much more willing to learn than they are, simply because technology has advanced so much faster in their lifetimes.
The problem, hence, is that we’re either trying to convince those that have given up on learning that they should learn new things, or that we’re making “learning” trite to those that do understand that they have to keep learning. By implication, I’m obviously a poor teacher of computer skills; but then, I may be quite skilled in using computers, and I don’t profess to be qualified in any way to teach others how to use them.
So in either case our message and/or method as arts professionals are completely wrong in trying to reach either audience segment. If we knew how to do it right, nobody would have a problem with learning.