He believed in the social use of art.

Interviewee: Mary Jane Jacob

I think it has always affected my curatorial work, because it aligns with my values though unbeknownst to me in a conscious way. Yet, like many people of the United States, my public school education was indebted John Dewey work early in the 20th century. The fact that art a regular part of a public school was because of Dewey and the way it was taught as a way of looking at the world influenced me growing up. It became my way of looking at the world. There was something there: that art has a value. It was not just about a profession or for those in the profession. It wasn’t until I worked on the Buddhism project in the early 2000s that Dewey’s book Art As Experience was brought to my attention because there were aspects of Asian thought in it. The things that I find profound and important about Dewey right now for this field we are talking about, is that he believed in the social use of art, that art develops our sense to empathy and connects us with others, and that art is something which speaks about culture and through which we live our culture. When Dewey speaks about the social result of art, he means it enables us to realize democracy. He understood that democracy is a process and Dewey felt art can fit into that process because allows us to cultivate an open way of thinking and the imagination to make positive change. As I said essential questions are never over, never ending. So we must cultivate our attention, Dewey thought, and take care of these questions in our lives. We need to continuously work at this during our lives. By probing essential questions, those at stake in our shared existence, and by holding true to values that can achieve a true democracy—and this process can be supported by our experience with art—we can better ourselves and make a more fair and equitable society. This also means looking at the values dictating how society operates and making change. Realizing oneself and realizing a democratic society were the two missions Dewey saw in life. These are simultaneous paths and one helps us achieve the other. They evolve together. Well, I think in social practice we are talking the same thing. It is related to what you said about your work as an exchange. It does something to you and to others at the same time. Social practice at its best is not about controlling somebody else; it is also not just about altruism. It would be useful if the field could see the relationship in social practice as a co-evolution. Another thing important for social practice is Dewey’s amazingly open definition of art. If the field could embrace that openness—and as you said the race for the right term or definition is not getting us ahead—then we could move on to the more critical, essential questions. To me, whether social practice is art or not is not an essential question. Dewey’s definition of art was experience: art is experience, not the object or even the action.