Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life

Engaging Art explores what it means to participate in the arts in contemporary society – from museum attendance to music downloading. Drawing on the perspectives of experts from diverse fields (including Princeton scholars Robert Wuthnow and Paul DiMaggio; Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice; and MIT scholars Henry Jenkins and Mark Schuster), this volume analyzes key trends involving technology, audience demographics, religion, and the rise of "do-it-yourself" participatory culture. Commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and independently carried out by the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University, Engaging Art offers a new framework for understanding the momentous changes impacting America’s cultural life over the past fifty years.

This volume offers suggestive glimpses into the character and consequence of a new engagement with old-fashioned participation in the arts. The authors in this volume hint at a bright future for art and citizen art making. They argue that if we center a new commitment to arts participation in everyday art making, creativity, and quality of life, we will not only restore the lifelong pleasure of homemade art, but will likely seed a new generation of enthusiasts who will support America’s signature nonprofit cultural institutions well into the future.

Bill Ivey is Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. From May 1998 through September 2001, Ivey served as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Steven J. Tepper is Associate Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University.