The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State
New Book Published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press Explores the Intersection of Art and Public Policy
Woodrow Wilson Center Press has published a new book, The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State, edited by Casey Nelson Blake. It is copublished with the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Influenced by two decades of debate inside and outside the academy about the relationship among the arts, politics, and public policy, the essays collected in The Arts of Democracy represent the coming of age of one of the liveliest fields in contemporary academic life. Written by some of the most respected and accomplished scholars working in their fields, this volume illuminates the often contradictory impulses that have shaped the historical intersection of the arts, public culture, and the state in modern America, beginning with an art market at the turn of the twentieth century that supported a notion of civic identity, through the mid-century era of state-sponsored art, to the postmodern disconnect between artistic and civic languages.
Topics range from Norman Rockwell as public artist and the creation of the NEA visual arts program to State Department-sponsored jazz tours in the mid-twentieth century, and religious displays in the twenty-first century. Taken together, the essays in The Arts of Democracy pave the way for future study in the complex and interwoven histories of artistic expression, values, ideology, statecraft, and democratic aspiration.
"The Arts of Democracy is a wonderful collection that addresses a set of vitally important topics. The essays range widely and imaginatively, offering nuanced considerations of the relationship between art, public culture, and the state. The book will be a must-read not only among historians and art historians, but also among arts administrators, foundation officers, and public officials."—Daniel Horowitz, author of Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique
Casey Nelson Blake is Professor of History and American Studies at Columbia University.
The Arts of Democracy is distributed by the University of Pennsylvania Press, www.upenn.edu/upennpress or telephone 1-800-537-5487. The price is $49.95 for hardcover.
