Spring Arts Week

Director's Note

A Note from the Director of the School of Arts and Entertainment

2023 Spring Arts Week Theme: “In Pursuit of Truth”

Living in the United States, we are saturated with information.  This information is propelled from many mediums - radio, television, internet, lived experience.  Some of this information is accurate, some is inaccurate.  It seems that everyone has an agenda - they want us to buy sneakers, like their Instagram page, or support their point of view.  How do we know which sources we can trust?  

In academia, we teach that there are trusted information publications - sources known for fact checking and presenting unbiased information.  Perhaps that is a start in the pursuit of truth - the facts.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a fact is the truth about an event, rather than an interpretation.  Facts can be measured and corroborated.  Scientific facts become so through research - experiments repeated over time by multiple people finding the same result through systematic methods of measurement.

Even so, truth can be elusive and complex.  Anyone who’s read a transcript of a conversation will see that while the words may be exactly what was said, the meaning inferred by emphasis, tone, and body language may be missing.  Is that resulting transcript the whole truth?

In Spring Arts Week 2023, we seek to engage the arts in our pursuit of truth. Where do we look for answers in art? And perhaps most importantly, what questions are we asking?