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Artist of the Month
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Creativity & Arts Spotlight : Rosemary Magee & Robert Paul
Right and left brain balance isn’t hard to find on Emory’s Quadrangle, but this is especially true of two Emory leaders who are advocates for the arts and artists in their own right. Emory University Vice-President & Secretary Rosemary Magee and Dean of Emory College Robert Paul recently had an opportunity to discuss creativity and related topics with Jessica Moore from the Center for Creativity & Arts (CCA). Paul and Magee have had a keen interest in the growth and integration of the arts at Emory. Magee, a scholar of Southern literature and a writer, chairs Emory University’s efforts in Creativity: Arts & Innovation. She was instrumental in the Schwartz Center becoming a reality, and chaired the steering committee for the arts. Dr. Paul is a noted psychoanalyst, playwright, and leads the administration of Emory College where he established the CCA. As Emory gears up to unlock its creativity at the Second Annual Creativity & Arts Soiree and kick off the arts season on Thursday, Sept. 10 (4-9 p.m.), Magee and Paul discussed their arts experiences.
Questions:
- What was your earliest encounter with the arts?
- Describe a seminal moment with the arts that you have experienced.
- Do you make art a part of your own everyday life? How?
- Discuss your own artistic work. Are you currently working on or looking forward to developing any new artistic projects in the next year or two?
- Why do you feel the arts are a critical part of a liberal arts education?
- What additional steps do you hope to see Emory take to ensure the integration of the arts in the life of the University?
- What is it about the Arts at Emory that makes us stand out compared to other universities comparable to Emory?
- How do you see Atlanta as a resource for the arts? Do you see the city itself growing in the arts?
- Closing ThoughtsWhat was your earliest encounter with the arts?
RM – I was very privileged because my family lived all over the world. My father was in the military so when we went to new places we would frequently go to museums, participate in rituals, attend programs, and learn about the culture through the arts. In addition, my maternal grandparents had a place of entertainment on the inland waterway in Savannah. Each summer the little theater from Savannah would come and put on a production that ranged from Bye Bye Birdie to Oklahoma! to My Fair Lady. As a child I was totally fascinated by the process of preparing for the play. That combination — of having seen the world through the arts and then participating in those great Broadway musicals in a very specific small little island community — had a huge influence on me.
RP – I too feel privileged and lucky that I had parents who were interested in the arts. I remember as a really young kid being especially entranced by Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, and other pieces of music that seemed to unlock places in one’s imagination. As a kid of about eight or nine, I put on a production of Oklahoma! with some other kids in our basement; it was a pretty low-key production, but we were just mesmerized by it. At about the same time the D’Oyly Carte company, which was in its last years of owning the sole copyright on the Gilbert and Sullivan plays, came to town and my father took me to see the great Martin Green in The Mikado. I was completely transformed; in fact, I still have a little booklet that I made of sketches of all the characters from the The Mikado. I do think that art has its roots in childhood imagination, and that children’s imaginations, with any luck, are far more unrestricted than those of grown-ups.
Back to Questions.
Describe a seminal moment with the arts that you have experienced.RM –I went to college at Florida State University and in order to get to my classes from where I lived I could take a shortcut through the school of music. In so doing, I encountered a cacophony of sounds from people practicing, debating, and rehearsing. That’s when I really began to understand the kind of discipline that’s required to be an artist and the required tenacity of the students. It’s easy to see the completed product and not fully gather the effort required to make it sound the way it sounds, or look the way it looks. That experience as a student really enlightened me and made me very curious about the arts, but also a little afraid because I felt I couldn’t possibly understand these works fully without that kind of knowledge and discipline. It would be like trying to understand advanced chemistry without any training. I like that idea of having a little bit of fearfulness about the arts because it gives them an emotional power. The arts are not just experiential; they engage the full array of complex human emotions, intellect, discipline, and understanding.
RP – I spent a good deal of my early adult life actually immersed in musical theater. In a high school English class we had a very excellent teacher who assigned my good friend Jack Berger a special project on Sophocles’ Antigone. Somehow in conversation Jack suggested that we ought to make it into a musical. In our naiveté we thought, “Sure, why not,” so I wrote a bunch of songs and Jack wrote the script, which was very funny. We put it on with several of our friends in the high school and it was a tremendous, roaring success. In fact, it got put on the local PBS TV station. I’ve never had that much fun in my whole life. I was hooked, so through college until after my PhD I continued to participate and to be active in musical theater. It was an extremely rewarding experience.
Do you make art a part of your own everyday life? How?
RP – I wish I could more, but absolutely I do. I listen to music all the time, I am a regular member of the High Museum, and go to museums in town and when I travel. I think that living a life surrounded by art in every sense and the notion of applying aesthetic ideals to all aspects of your life, is the way life should be.
RM – First of all, I’m an avid reader, which I indulge every day. I frequently read about art either in the New York Times or the New Yorker, but mostly I read fiction. The University itself these days offers a full menu of almost anything you’d want to do in a given week. Between meetings I frequently stop in at the Carlos Museum just because it’s on my way, and I try to see something that I haven’t seen before. For about the past ten years, maybe a little longer, I’ve been writing short fiction. I work on those stories every week, if not every day. In that way I have that deep experience of not only being an observer, but also of somebody who’s actively participating in an artistic project.
Discuss your own artistic work. Are you currently working on or looking forward to developing any new artistic projects in the next year or two?
RM – I have about twenty completed stories, half of those are published in small literary magazines, and I want to create a collection. However, compiling, organizing, and administering these stories doesn’t seem as pleasurable to me as writing them. In fact, I’ve just asked Emory ILA graduate Amanda Gable, who has a brand new novel published, which I’ve just finished reading, to help guide me through that process. I’m hoping that with a little bit of coaching that I’ll be able to get to the next stage in this process.
RP – I have not myself been active in musical theater for a while, though one of my shows The Rise of David Levinsky (Book and Lyrics by Isaiah Sheffer, Music by Bobby Paul, based on the novel by Abraham Cahan) recently had a revival in Florida by the New Vista Theatre Company as part of it 2007 season. My kids have never seen this show, so it was great to take them down there and let them see this side of their dad. This is my last year as Dean and I’m planning to take a little time off and get a lot of scholarly work done, but I also have a plan in the back of my mind to work on a musical project that I started many years ago. I wrote a whole bunch of songs for it, which as I look back are pretty good, in my opinion anyway. The subject is extremely timely; it’s about the stock market. Actually, it’s set in the gilded age, the age of the robber barons. I think that’s a very interesting distant mirror from the past on the present for all kinds of obvious reasons, so I would like to complete it and craft it into final form, and see if somebody will put it on.
Back to Questions.
Why do you feel the arts are a critical part of a liberal arts education?RM – I’m completely convinced of the transforming quality of the arts and one of the great things about the arts these days is that everybody can be a participant. We have the technology so that you can create a video, a blog, a music composition, and many of other types of art yourself. There’s a great power associated with those possibilities. In addition, there are ways to probe the meaning of life through arts that you can’t begin to touch through other disciplines or methodologies. Without the arts, students don’t have the wherewithal to understand, comprehend, and navigate the complex, global world that we all inhabit.
RP - I certainly agree with everything Rosemary said, but I also just go back to what I said earlier, which is that it’s just the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. Why would I want people to experience art? Well, because it’s so great. They should be exposed to it and they should have that same experience. Also, in terms of putting it in the educational context, as young people come to adulthood the experience of tapping into their own creativity and of using their imagination liberates something in the mind that is essential to navigating the rest of life. Too much of pedagogy in this country involves just sitting there and absorbing facts and being able to cough them back on some sort of standardized exam. The notion that you can create knowledge or something of value yourself is a crucial part of one’s education.
What additional steps do you hope to see Emory take to ensure the integration of the arts in the life of the University?
RP - We’ve made tremendous strides in creativity and the arts. Looking at the arts offerings now versus what it was like when we both came here in 1977, is just like night and day. We hope to continue that exponential growth and, when the good times roll again, to provide the resources so that we can sustain and enhance all those offerings that we now finally have.
RM – When I think about what I want to see continue to flourish is a kind of arts for everyone experience, for the arts to be inescapable on our campus. You can’t spend a day without having bumped into the arts in some form or another whether it might be a sculpture, an exhibition, a concert, or a happening. We have amazing treasures among our own students and faculty, and we also have outstanding visitors who give a great deal to the life of this campus ranging from Salman Rushdie who’s a regular, recurring visitor and very much embedded in the life of the community, to Philip Glass or Edward Albee. All of those experiences are an inescapable part of the Emory experience which enlarge and enhance the whole value and meaning of an Emory education.
RP – A big goal of mine is that Emory’s campus should be the cultural heart of the city of Atlanta and the region. People should just think, “Let’s see what’s happening at Emory tonight.” In fact, we’ve pretty much reached that saturation point, but I really want to continue to grow and function as a sort of cultural and artistic heartbeat of the City. I think one place that Emory has to go is in the area of new media studies. That will certainly overlap with film studies and visual arts, as well as with journalism and creative writing. Also, the big gaping hole here is we don’t have a theater. We have a theater space that has worked wonderfully so far, but we really need a general theater space if we’re going to make to make the move to the next step of excellence. The Schwartz Center, more than almost anything else, has totally transformed the reality and the perception of the arts at Emory, but it’s mainly focused on the musical side of things. We need to have a similar step forward in the area of a theater.
What is it about the Arts at Emory that makes us stand out compared to other universities comparable to Emory?
RM – I think this emphasis on the arts being integrated into the liberal arts curriculum is not unique, but it’s certainly distinctive. We do as good a job of that as almost any other place I can think about, especially in the research university environment. This past year we had this great performance of Stabat Mater [also airing on Georgia Public Broadcasting Sept. 20 at 6 p.m.], which was composed by one of our own Emory faculty [Richard Prior, Director of Orchestral Studies], performed by Emory students, filmed by another Emory faculty member [William Brown, Visual Arts], featured an Emory staff member as a soloist [Cynthia Watters], and was performed in our own world-class facility, the Schwartz Center. That collaboration really speaks to me. One reason I like to go those performances, in addition to the great quality of the work, has to do with the students who are audience members as well as participants. Maybe the arts provide a kind of school spirit as well as individual emotional spirit that lifts us all up.
RP – I think we’ve achieved that goal of having the arts integrated into the liberal arts curriculum through the offerings that are available for people to practice art at a near conservatory level. In fact, if they want to go on and become professionals they’ve been trained enough that they can, but we’re not actually expecting that most of our graduates will have lives as performers or practitioners of the arts the way a conservatory would. Here at Emory arts are totally integrated so that they are part of the community life in a way which is participatory for everyone.
How do you see Atlanta as a resource for the arts? Do you see the city itself growing in the arts?
RM – I definitely think that Atlanta has been transforming itself at the same time that Emory has been transforming itself. We have active interactions and collaborations with the Woodruff Arts Center, which is great. We have the people from the Alliance Theater teaching here and we recently awarded an honorary degree to Robert Spano of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. We’re in active conversations with the High Museum. In addition, Atlanta has theater, dance, and musical organizations of every size, shape, and type. Many of our alumni play leadership roles in the arts throughout the city and the region. One additional great aspect of Atlanta is that it’s a centerpiece of African-American culture. Atlanta is alive with the arts, and Atlanta is a place where visiting artists want to come and where local talent is really nurtured.
RP – I agree that Atlanta has been going through the same evolution that Emory has. Evolution makes it sound like it’s been happening slowly, when in fact it’s really sort of burst and exploded. The theater, music, and arts scene are deeply entwined. I was recently at the opening of the photography show at our gallery [The Lucid Eye: Photographs from the Collection of Arnall Golden Gregory, Aug. 27 – Sept. 25] which was lent by Arnall Golden Gregory, a local law firm. That example of interaction between a local law firm and Emory’s gallery to the benefit of both is just one obvious recent example of all of the many ways in which Emory and the city can continue to stimulate each other and enhance each other’s offerings.
RM – We say that we’re a culture that doesn’t really appreciate or value art. I think that’s a common statement about American culture. I’m curious about that perspective. This past year we celebrated the publication of the letters of Samuel Beckett with a program in Glenn Auditorium including Salman Rushdie, Edward Albee, Brenda Bynum, and Robert Shaw-Smith. Over 1,000 people came. When Salman Rushdie speaks we frequently have over 1,000 people who attend. Our dance concerts and music programs are often filled to capacity. What is that? Is it true that we’re anemic in the understanding, desire, and appreciation of the arts, or is it true that the arts are really flourishing and are speaking to people in ways that we don’t fully recognize?
RP – That’s an intriguing question. My initial response is that America is so big and so vast and that almost any statement you could make about it is sort of true. One must remember that when you talk about art, popular culture is an artistic form and it pervades everything we do. People now have much more eclectic tastes and enjoy art in all genres.
RM –I would like to somehow recreate that experience that I had as an undergraduate where you wander, see, observe, and get curious about the arts. That happens in the Schwartz Center, the Visual Arts Gallery, the Carlos Museum, the DUC, and elsewhere nearly every day. Last year we had an extraordinary art exhibition with the School of Medicine. But it could happen even more. I think we’ve made tremendous strides all over campus. The generation of the interest will only continue, and in that regard the students are our greatest resources.
Edited by Jessica Moore
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory
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