Author: Gelles, George

Publication Year: 1976

Media Type: Report

Summary:

In October of 1976, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance sponsored a symposium on a theme whose significance is too often ignored - the concerns shared in common by the arts, the humanities, the sciences, and technology. The Congress for Creative America, as the gathering was called, was conceived as a theatre of ideas. Its players were 22 eminent American men and women whose professional interests reflected a broad spectrum of creative endeavor; its scenario was one of open-ended exploration; and its aim was to foster mutual regard for the problems and pleasures faced by colleagues in neighboring disciplines.

Abstract:

In October of 1976, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance sponsored a symposium on a theme whose significance is too often ignored - the concerns shared in common by the arts, the humanities, the sciences, and technology. The Congress for Creative America, as the gathering was called, was conceived as a theatre of ideas. Its players were 22 eminent American men and women whose professional interests reflected a broad spectrum of creative endeavor; its scenario was one of open-ended exploration; and its aim was to foster mutual regard for the problems and pleasures faced by colleagues in neighboring disciplines.

Participating in the Congress were:

• Maya Angelou, poet and playwright.
• Milton Babbitt, Professor of Music at Princeton University and a founding member of the Electronic Music Center of Columbia-Princeton Universities.
• Hans Bethe, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1967 and in the 1940s head of the theoretical physics division of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.
• Merrill Brockway, Series Producer/Director of the WNET-TV series Dance in America and former Executive Producer/Director of the CBS-TV series, Camera Three.
• Denise Scott Brown, architect and planner, and principal in the firm of Venturi and Rauch.
• Robert Brustein, Dean of the Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre.
• Britton Chance, E.R. Johnson Professor of Biophysics and Physical Biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Director of the Johnson Research Foundation.
• Judith Crist, film critic for TV Guide and Saturday Review.
• Benjamin Harkarvy, Artistic Director of the Pennsylvania Ballet and Founder of the Netherlands Dance Theatre.
• Brook Hindle, Director of the National museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
• Alex Katz, painter.
• Bella Lewitsky, choreographer, teacher, and Artistic Director of her own dance company.
• Ian McHarg, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, and Professor of City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts.
• Rollo May, psychoanalyst and author.
• Robert S. Morison, Class of 1949 Visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former Director of the Division of Biological Sciences at Cornell University.
• Donn Pennebaker, documentary filmmaker.
• Judith Raskin, soprano.
• George Rochberg, Professor of Composition at the University of Pennsylvania.
• George Segal, sculptor.
• Aaron Siskind, Photographer.
• Billy Taylor, jazz pianist and composer.
• Douglas Turner Ward, actor, playwright, and Artistic Director of the Negro Ensemble Company.

At the core of the Congress was a series of five round-table discussions, the transcripts of which are offered here.

Each talk took as its point of departure a brief essay or position paper that was prepared after my interviews with virtually all of the participants. The essays were designed to present various aspects of the way creative people currently perceive their estate; they focused on the following subjects:

• The Artist in an Age of Transition: The Aesthetics of Inquiry in Science and the Arts;
• Responsibility and Responsiveness;
• The Theatre of Discontent; and
• The Climate for Creativity in the Decades Ahead.

It will be clear that these papers, each of which is prefaced to the pertinent transcript, were not intended to be authoritative statements but were meant to serve as stimulants. Each paper is in fact a synthesis of almost two dozen interviews. Each incorporates ideas endorsed by one or another of the participants, but at the same time, each offer ideas with which participants can argue.

It will be clear as well that the position papers served at times not merely as points of departure but as springboards into related realms. In the opening and closing sessions especially, both of which involved all the participants, there was a tendency to elaborate on the agenda of issues rather than addressing it directly.

The discussions that follow have been pared to their pith. As they transpired they were dense with ideas and opinions.

What, then, were the dominant themes to emerge from this feast of words? In an evaluation of The Artist in an Age of Transition two threads wove the primary fabric. One was provided by Rollo May and George Segal, who differed at the session's outset on the self-destructive penchant of people in the arts, and the other was introduced by Robert Brustein, who noted the role-playing demands made on creative individuals.

The panel that investigated The Aesthetics of inquiry in Science and the Arts opened with a good-natured if precise jeremiad by Milton Babbitt on the misconceptions that befog a clear perspective of his own and his fellow composers' work. Following this there was an exchange on the need to embrace the limits of form.

The session on Responsibility and Responsiveness, spurred by George Rochberg, dealt first with questions of cultural pluralism and then raised an issue of complex fascination:

Should our artists be expected to provide society at large, and scientists in particular with a moral order that is viable and valid?

In probing The Theatre of Discontent the men and women from the world of the performing arts made a number of pleas for fuller understanding of their prerequisites and goals. In opening an assessment of The Climate for Creativity in the Decades Ahead, Dr. Morison proposed a number of fundamental differences between science and the arts.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Artists-Resources for