James Hathaway, 480-965-6375[email protected]July 2,2001
Conference Offers National Dialogue About Ethics in Art
Concerns about ethics in the arts -- the morality of art and artists, business practices in art, and the censorship of art -- have been around for a long time, at least since the fifth century B.C., when Plato called poets liars. Curiously, the discussion since has almost always been ad hoc -- outrage over a lurid novel, a pornographic movie, a racist song, an offensive exhibit or about particular acts of political or cultural censorship. Though ethics has always been in the background, there has never been a concerted attempt to examine the broad ethical issues implicit in the complex and sometimes troubled relationship between the arts, artists and society.
Until now. This fall, Arizona State University's Joan and David Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics will host a major national conference entitled "Ethics and the Arts."
"Though ethical issues are regularly part of the news, commentary and public dialogue involving the arts, no one has ever tried to bring together a national group of artists, art critics, social critics and philosophers to look at these issues in large scale," said Peter French, director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. "The divergence of opinions is great and the ethical issues are complex. It ought to be an exhilarating and informative set of discussions."
Scheduled for October 28 to 30, the conference is aimed at being the first large scale intellectual and practical discussion of ethical issues involving the arts. The conference will include panel discussions exploring a broad range of important ethical topics and featuring the views of nationally prominent artists, arts and entertainment industry leaders, critics, journalists and philosophers. Aimed at members of the arts community, policy makers, philosophers, critics and concerned citizens, the Ethics and the Arts Conference is open to the general public as well.
The conference's topics will include "The Ethics of Content," "Art as an Agent of Social Change," "Values in Film," "Moral and Aesthetic Judgments," "The Ethical Management of the Business of Art," " The Appropriation of Ritual Objects," "Does Art Incite Behavior?" and "Feminists Face the Arts." The main conference format will be panels on these topics, each led by an ethicist and a critic or journalist, but the conference will also include three keynote speakers.
Conference keynote speakers will include novelist, poet and filmmaker Sherman Alexie, actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, and documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy (daughter of Robert F. Kennedy). Other participants include Laurie Trotta, executive director of Mediascope; Marjorie Heins, director of the Arts Censorship Project of the American Civil Liberties Union; Tony Berg, a record producer at Virgin Records; Bob Peters, president of Morality in Media; Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund, a non-profit organization that "funds the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and family values"; Bird Running Water, a screenwriter at Sundance Institute; and Tim Miller, performance artist and member of the "NEA Four," a group of controversial artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed by John Frohnmayer in 1990.
ASU's Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics is a university-wide resource that includes faculty, curricula and programs in the colleges of Business, Education, Engineering, Fine Arts, Law, Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Public Programs. With a mission aimed at both education and public discussion of ethics, the center sponsors a number of public events each year, including lectures, symposia and a major annual conference on ethics in a specific field of interest.
For information and registration materials for the Ethics in the Arts Conference, contact Stacey Russell at the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at 480-727-6244.
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