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Performing and Fine Arts Committee
Diane Magerko - Chairman and Trustee Patti Douglas - Committee Member Cheryl Chiappetta
- Westfield School Art
Kim Konie Fuller - Dundee Crown High School Art Claudia Swarthout - Parkview Music Carolyn Washow-
Jacobs High School Art Laura LaRue - Hampshire High School Art Debby Waters - Dundee Highlands Music
President Kennedy when addressing the audience at Amhurst College celebrating
Robert Frost had this to say about the artist:
"...For art establishes the basic human truths which
must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes
the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.
The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, "a lover's quarrel with the
world." In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This
is not a popular role.
If Robert Frost was much honored during his lifetime, it was because
a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths.
Yet in retrospect we see how the artist's
fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical
of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes
him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential.
I see little of more importance
to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish
the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.
We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked
of poets. "there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style."
In free
society, art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers
of the soul.
It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society -- in it -- the highest
duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.
In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains
the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man--"the fate of having nothing to look backward to
with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope." "
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