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Interesting facts, quotes and news on benefits of art.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful. Alice Walker Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.  -- Auguste Rodin

Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.  -- John Lubbock

"Life isn't one straight line. Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom."  -- Louise Nevelson

"Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity."  -- M.P. Mussorgsky

"The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water."  -- Stendahl

 "What a strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day." --  Grandma Moses

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass." --  William Faulkner

"I do not want to die . . . until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown."  -- Kathe Kollwitz

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. -- George Jean Nathan

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is 'kitsch'? If only I knew!  -- M. C. Escher

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things."  -- Vincent Van Gogh

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all." -- Stanley Horowitz

"Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But . . . the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel." -- Romare Howard Bearden

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams

 My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. -- Pablo Picasso

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys of learning -- Plato

Playing the piano makes me feel as if the music surrounds me and fills every part of me with inimitable sounds. With the kind help of The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, my dream of continuing my piano playing is being turned into a reality. -- -- Lyudmila Latanas,

Student Hope High School Providence, RI I have long believed in the important role that music and the arts can play in helping students learn, achieve and succeed. Education in theater, dance and the visual arts is one of the most creative ways we have to find the gold that is buried just beneath the surface. They (children) have enthusiasm for life, a spark of creativity and vivid imaginations that need training...training that prepares them to become confident young men and women. -- -- US Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley AMC News, 3/21/98

The enactment of the bipartisan Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994 recognized the arts as a core areas of study in which American children are expected to achieve competency. - Community Update, No. 54 February 1998, US Department of Education Students with music appreciation courses scored higher on the SAT: 61 points higher on the verbal and 46 points higher on the math than students with no arts participation. -- 1995 College-Bound Seniors National Report Profile of SAT Program Test Takers The College Entrance Examination Board Princeton, NJ

The drop out rate decreased by 21% where area schools offer music and arts education. -- Newsweek, 4/14/97

The US Department of Labor issued a report urging schools to teach and prepare children entering in the future workplace. The skills they recommend (working in teams, communication, self-esteem, creative thinking, imagination and invention) are exactly those learned in school music education programs. -- -- Goals 2000: Educate America Act

Disadvantaged preschoolers display dramatic improvements in spatial reasoning ability after music training. -- -- Drs. Rouscher and Shw University of California, Irvine

Music lessons have been shown to improve a child's performance in school. After eight months of keyboard lessons, preschoolers tested showed a 46% boost in heir spatial IQ, which is crucial for higher brain functions such as complex mathematics. -- Frances Rouscher, Ph.D., Gordon Shaw, Ph.D. University of California, Irvine

Bugg Elementary in North Carolina is one of 27 schools in North Carolina experimenting with ways of using the arts to improve basic skills. School officials say there is already plenty of evidence that integrating music and poetry into the curriculum stimulates kids' interest in other subjects. "Attendance is up and behavior problems are down," says Jim Fatata, principal of the Bugg School." - Newsweek, April 14, 1997