Literary experts and enthusiasts from around the world convened at the University this weekend for the "Fate of the Arts" colloquia, hosted by the University's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and co-sponsored by a wide range of other University academic departments. Speakers contemplated the transformation of the arts in modern times and their future role in culture and society.
The conference included readings, lectures and discussions by literary critic Terry Eagleton, literary theorist Kryzstof Ziarek, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, former National Endowment for the Arts Chair Bill Ivey, artist and critic Suzi Gablik and poet Adam Zagajewski.
The two-day conference concluded with a panel discussion in the Dome Room of the Rotunda Saturday afternoon moderated by University English Prof. Michael Levenson, during which the guests pondered the ultimate fate of the arts, responded to one another's ideas and to an audience of University and literary community members.
"When asked about the fate of the arts, each speaker spun out a narrative of the past," Levenson said during the discussion. "However, there is a common shyness when it comes to projecting the next fate of the arts."
The speakers identified technology, the contrast between art for contemplation and art for profit and the incorporation, or lack thereof, of culture into mainstream society as determining factors in the future of the arts.
While the panel identified technology as a possible threat to traditional forms of the arts, some speakers anticipated that technology would not have detrimental effects on their survival.
"I am profoundly dubious that technological developments are going to displace all that much of what you and I know as the arts," Wolterstorff said. "There is not a chance the arts are going to disappear."
Some speakers lamented the apparent apathy and lack of engagement in the arts by society while proposing an increase in political and government support of social culture.
"Unless culture is fed and nurtured by a wider political movement, it will run into the sand," Eagleton said.
Despite the mixed predictions concerning the arts, a clear outline of their future was not necessarily the goal of the individual speakers or the conference.
"When one looks over the history of humanities art, what comes into sight is a long enduring social [construction] always open to change," Wolterstorff said. "One of the glories of art is that we cannot tell its future. It is open endlessly to change."
The papers from "The Fate of the Arts" colloquia will be included in this summer's issue of "The Hedgehog Review," published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
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