We’ve spent most of our lives as teachers (junior high schools, high schools, community colleges, and universities) and as artists (photographers capturing ephemeral moments) who believe that arts are critical to culture. We want young people to be fascinated by arts—whether architecture, paintings, sculptures, photographs, fabrics, dance, music, digital compositions, or environmental installations. But, to be blunt, we also believe that art history and art appreciation are often introduced and taught in ways that discourage students from connecting with the arts, from becoming lovers, collectors, and creators. 

What causes these disconnects between studying arts and enjoying them? In some cases, students are asked to concentrate on names, dates, periods, and techniques. Emphasizing the who, what, and when of arts reduces the likelihood that students will appreciate the why, how, and so what. In other cases, students are given no information but are asked to observe an art object and emote—to connect what they view to their own feelings, beliefs, and experiences. This approach usually gets younger students rapidly engaged, but it often annoys older students and sometimes simply turns off adults (even if they politely participate). 

The disconnects and the resulting loss of interest in the arts also come from decontextualizing arts from the human experience. For example, overly emphasizing the aesthetics or the science can decontextualize arts if cultural contexts and artists are ignored. The aesthetics of arts involves factors such as color, brushstrokes, composition, and line. The science of arts involves factors such as the chemistry of paint and the effects of time and light; the interaction between paint and surface of canvas, wood, or plaster; or the characteristics of different media, whether paper or computer screen. When the focus is largely on aesthetics and science in isolation, arts are stripped of narratives useful in promoting understanding, forging cultural connections, and scaffolding memory. 

While we believe the aesthetics and the science of arts are important, we do not believe that arts float decontextualized in cultural neutrality. Narratives connect art objects to each other and to their audiences. In fact, every art object is part of larger narratives—narratives about the context and process of creation, about the emotional and political power of art objects, and about audience interpretations. We believe that cultural narratives (and the stories that comprise them) are an effective way to create engagement with the arts. 

We are not alone in encouraging narratives and stories. Many professions—from marketing to medicine, from pedagogy to politics, from science to sports—use narratives and stories to influence people’s attitudes and actions. Narratives contextualize arts, forming the “big picture” by identifying patterns in people, objects, and events. Stories (with settings, characters, and actions) are one of the strategies that contribute to narratives. Do we want people more engaged with the arts, to pay greater attention to the arts, to see the personal and cultural value of the arts? Then we need to use narratives and supporting stories. We know that people are typically more influenced by arguments based on emotions and human experience than on those based purely on logic. In fact, storytelling can be more influential than historical facts to affirm that art matters—stories that promote understanding, stories that forge connections, stories that scaffold memories, and—our long-range goal, as we said in the beginning—stories that encourage lovers, collectors, and creators of art. 

Narratives humanize the artists and their art as well as give observers hooks for remembering the pieces and relating to them. The website of London’s Tate Galleries reminds us that until the 20^th century, much of Western art was narrative-based, depicting familiar stories from religion, myth and legend, history, and literature. For example, when, in 429 BCE, in ancient Athens, audiences went to see Sophocles’ Oedipus, they were already familiar with the myth of Oedipus and were interested in seeing his new interpretation. [See Figure 1.] 

Figure 1: The ancient Theater of Dionysus, dating back to the 6^th century BCE, was the first and largest theater to be built in Athens, located near the Parthenon, on the south side of the Acropolis. At its largest, it could accommodate approximately 17,000 spectators. [Photo credit: © Maria Eichmans Cochran, 2013. Used with permission.]

Similarly, parishioners were familiar with a large Christian narrative, even while viewing icons of particular saints in early Christian churches, still visible, for example, in the Church of St. Nicholas (built in 1664), in Kozani, Greece. [See Figure 2.] 

Figure 2: Two icons from the Church of St. Nicholas, in Kozani, Greece. [Photo credit: © Marc Keroack, 2016. Used with permission.]

However, by the end of the 19^th century, art became less narrative, less figurative; many critics viewed figurative art based on a narrative as "vulgar, pandering to philistine middle-class taste.”^­­­­ Most 20^th century avant-garde art de-emphasized narrative and made understanding of art “coded” with what current students often see as puzzles to be solved or messages with insider references to political or social issues appealing and accessible only to the intellectual elite. We do not support using only narrative-based art, but, we argue, many art beginners respond well to cultural narratives with supporting stories about what inspired the piece or how the artist created it.  

Here we make an important distinction, differentiating narrative art from narratives about art.^{2, 3, 4} Narrative art uses various techniques to tell a story—a single moment or as a sequence of events over time. For example, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz tells her Holocaust survival story in 36 large, pieced, appliqued, and embroidered folk-art panels—in exhibition and in her book, Memories of Survival.^{5, 6} [See Figure 3.]

Figure 3: The cover of the book, Memories of Survival, shows one of the 36 narrative folk-art panels from Esther Nisenthal Krinitz’s Holocaust survival story. [Photo credit: Rebecca E. Burnett, 2021. Used with permission of Art & Remembrance, Washington, D.C.]   

In contrast, narratives about art include stories about artists, about the creative process, about the culture in which the art was created and interpreted, about the circumstances generating the art, and about reactions to the art. While some critics argue that narratives limit viewers’ interpretations, we distinguish narratives that interpret (and, thus, narrow the viewers’ imagination) from the narratives that contextualize the artifact (and, thus, increase the viewers’ understanding and appreciation). For example, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei created 100 million unique porcelain sunflower seeds, weighing a total of 150 tons.^{7, 8} Offering interpretations of the piece restricts the range of associations the artifact invites. However, telling the story of the seeds’ creation engages viewers and feeds their imagination. The porcelain seeds were hand painted by thousands of individual craftspeople in a Chinese village famous for its production of imperial porcelain. The seeds were first exhibited in 2010 in London’s Tate Modern Turbine Hall. The original plan was an interactive exhibition, with museum visitors walking on the porcelain seeds, but the resulting dust could potentially have caused lung damage, so visitors simply walked close to the sunflower seeds, representing both individuality and the enormity of the collective. When the Tate Modern exhibit was over, the sunflower seeds were sold to museums around the world. [See Figure 4.]

Figure 4: A small pile of Weiwei’s 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds. How many in this photo?
Two hundred. Imagine 100 million. [Photo credit: © Maria Eichmans Cochran, 2021. Used with permission.]  

For many audiences, narratives connect arts to their lives in meaningful ways. Benefits of the arts are summarized by Curt Rice (Rector of Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway) who explains that arts (and the broader field of humanities) help people understand histories and cultures; make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of the world; deal with critically complex, imperfect information; and think creatively.⁹ The arts provoke people to ask questions about our world and become informed and critical citizens. Arts can help viewers become careful analysts—not for the purpose of enjoying a singular piece of art—but to become more acute observers of the human condition, to be more thoughtful and articulate in their comments and decisions.  

SOURCES CITED

1. Fletcher, Pamela. (2018). Narrating Modernity: This British Problem Picture, 1895-1914. Taylor & Francis. 

2. Tate. Narrative: Narrative art is art that tells a story. Tate Art Term. 

3. McNamara, Ann et al. (2012). Directing gaze in narrative art. Proceedings of the ACM. 

4. Shaw, Samuel. (2016). ‘Narrative and anti-narrative’ in Samuel Shaw (ed.), In Focus: The Doll’s House 1899–1900 by William Rothenstein. Tate Research Publication.  

5. Art & Remembrance. https://artandremembrance.org/about/founders/ 

6. Krinitz, Esther Nisenthal & Bernice Steinhardt. (2005). Memories of Survival. Hyperion. 

7. Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds. https://www.aiweiweiseeds.com/about-ai-weiweis-sunflower-seeds 

8. Tate. (2010). Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds/Artist Interview. YouTube. 

9. Rice, Curt. (2014). Here are 9 reasons why humanities matter. What’s your number 10? Science in Balance.