Art Now: Aesthetics Across Music, Painting, Architecture, Movies, and More - A Lecture by Leon Botstein

It is one of the most debated subjects of all time: What is art? Some might think it doesn't much matter whether or not consensus is achieved on this highly subjective topic, but the definition of art has an enormous impact upon how the arts are — or aren't — funded. The question of what constitutes art spills over into debates about art's value to society — whether access to the arts is right as basic as education or health care. In this video lecture from The Floating University, Bard College President Leon Botstein explains why it is essential to ask these questions and offers a sturdy basis for evaluating them. He goes so far as to suggest that engaging with art can give our lives meaning and purpose.

 

The live audience Q&A with President Botstein and moderated by The Floating University's co-founder Peter Hopkins, immediately follows the lecture screening.
 

The Floating University is a new educational media venture featuring video lectures and texts from leading scholars from Harvard, Yale, Bard, CUNY and other high-ranking institutions of higher learning. In partnership with The New York Public Library, The Floating University is making five seminars from its inaugural course, "Great Big Ideas," available to library patrons as one-time programs.

 

For additional information, please visit www.nypl.org/floatinguniversity.

 

Leon Botstein is the conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College in New York. He became the youngest college president in the US history when he took the head post at Franconia College at age 23. Dr. Botstein has published scholarly works in numerous disciplines, including music, education, and culture. He is the author of the popular book Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, in which he lays out a progressive view of education.

 

Peter Hopkins is also the co-founder & President of Big Think, which is dedicated to promoting informed discourse online through video interviews and getting users involved in the conversation. The site launched in beta in January of 2008 and currently features over 1500 expert contributors, from John McCain to Harrison Ford. Before his life at Big Think, he was a PBS producer, where he oversaw a partnership with Google to digitize and archive 5,000 hours of content from the Charlie Rose show and launch a new multimedia website to distribute it.