Research and Practice

The Center for the Arts in Society supports the research and practice of individual members and coordinates research projects that extend across disciplinary boundaries. The Center encourages team research projects, just as it encourages team teaching, assuming that conversations prompt further inquiries into the significance of crossing disciplinary boundaries. The Center also sponsors collaborative projects that involve Center members, colleagues from the University, and colleagues from outside the University. These projects are designed to open access to the general public for discussions of art, of art in society, and of the impact that art and artists have on cultural revival and economic renewal.

Read more about Center member projects, the Faculty Grant Program, Center Workshops and the Public Art Initiatives.

The Center announces its forthcoming book, (Im)permanence: Cultures In/Out of Time (Carnegie Mellon and Penn State University Press).

(Im)permanence: Cultures in/out of Time explores the interplay between permanence and impermanence in cultural and artistic practices in the west and throughout the world.

The volume engenders questions about the changing meanings of permanence and impermanence in art, the ethics and modes of preserving ephemeral artwork, notions of time and endurance as understood in Western, East Asian, and American Indian cultures, and the impact of international policies on commemorative art.  (Im)permanence addresses particularly crucial artists, including Robert Smithson and Andy Goldsworthy, as well as a wide variety of historical epochs and cultures, from the destroyed Buddhas at Bamiyan through attempts at preservation and commemoration in the wake of historical catastrophes like 9/11 and the genocide in Cambodia.  Decisions regarding particular works are seen in the perspective of globalization, an international art market, and competing interpretations of collective memory.

The book is available from the Penn State University Press.

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