Author: National Endowment for the Arts

Publication Year: 1975

Media Type: Report

Summary:

Abstract:

A decade ago, August Heckscher, President Kennedy's Special Consultant on the Arts, found that the was entering a period when in terms of the excitement and enthusiasm of the great public, we are witnessing a kind of renaissance such as we have not had before. There are in the people new desires, new ardors. You cannot travel across this country today without finding in every city there are plans afoot to do something new with the life of that place; to build a cultural center, to create an opera group, to make of that city a center for culture and the arts.

Renaissance is a strong word, and such a large claim would be hard to prove. The Italian artists in the 15th and 16th centuries, who created one, did not speak of their renaissance. Later, historians summed up that remarkable burst of creativity as a re-birth.

Whether future historians will decide that America in the 1970s was in the midst of a cultural renaissance, we can not know. But no period in America's history equals the sheer ebulliance of today's cultural life - not only in the major cities and traditional centers of culture, but in small towns and rural areas throughout the country.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Community Development