Trafficking in wonder: The arts and the liberal arts

From: Connection, New England's Journal of Higher Education | Date: July 1, 1998| Author: | Copyright information

Like ancient Rome, the United States is better known for its pragmatic achievements than its aesthetic ones. Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, describes how those in democracies such as ours "habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful" and "require that the beautiful ... be useful." When choices need to be made between the two in our country, utility invariably wins out over art. The lightbulb of Thomas Edison is preferred to the light of Robert Frost's poems, Henry Ford's automobile to Tennessee Williams' Streetcar.

Nonetheless, the ideal of art lies just below the surface ...

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