Obama and the arts

I have to thank WordPress for this one. Their automatically generated “possibly related posts” feature helped me find a post on Entrepreneur the Arts with Barack Obama speaking about the importance of the arts. It was linked to my post on race and the arts. While he mentions some of the usual stuff about the arts improving your math scores, he stresses the bigger picture, the value of learning to be creative, and learning “to see the world through other people’s eyes.” It’s these other aspects that I find very important, both for the arts and especially for politics. You don’t always get an easy answer for every problem. Some actions don’t have an immediate, tangible benefit. But those activities still have value.