Sense and Spirituality: The Arts and Spiritual Formation

Artworks don’t manage knowledge—they channel it. It takes time and attention to understand an artwork’s meaning. Each piece demands a process of reconciliation, and a merging of two contexts: the artwork’s own history and the viewer’s private knowledge network. When it’s placed in a new context, its meaning evolves and expands elastically. It store... See more

My working definition of art is thus derived in part from both a moderate institutional theory that recognizes the important role that the museum space plays in determining meaning and mediating a history, tradition, and theory of what occurs in that space, and an ecological theory of art that affirms that in its making and viewing, art does someth

... See more