New City Arts Forum

This week Redeemer Arts has invited two close partners to share with you about a new and important art & faith movement which will culminate next month in an exciting way at the New City Arts Forum. To whet your appetite for this event we've asked our good friend Dan Siedell, who will be a featured speaker at the Forum, to contribute a blog introducing the issues he will address at the Forum. You can learn more about Dan Siedell's life and work in his book God in the Gallery or by listening to podcasts at International Arts Movement. One of our favorite articles by Dan is Art as an Aescetic Practice, which you'll find at his blog. Please enjoy reading this article, and we hope you'll consider attending the upcoming New City Arts Forum in Charlottesville.

Kenyon & Maria, Redeemer Arts Staff

A Word from Dan Siedell

The New City Arts Initiative, a network of artists and advocates in Charlottesville, Virginia that is committed to supporting human flourishing through the arts, is hosting it's inaugural conference April 20-22, 2012. Organized around the theme Art, City and Society, a small cohort of artists, scholars and advocates has been invited to facilitate a conversation around the following questions. What is the responsibility of the artist? What is good art? What is the relationship of art and social engagement? Who is our audience? And finally, what is the role of the church?

NCAI has invited me to reflect on the role of the church in the arts from the perspective of God in the Gallery, a book I wrote a few years ago, in which I argued that the church needs to understand modern and contemporary art more deeply and on its own terms in order more effectively to embrace it.

After fifteen years as a museum curator, art history professor, and practicing art historian, I have recently joined the staff of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida as a cultural theologian. This vocational and institutional shift has rotated my approach to the role of the church and the arts in obvious and not so obvious ways. Through the unique opportunities and challenges of Coral Ridge, I will discuss what I have come to believe is the most important role that the contemporary church can play for the arts: love them. It sounds obvious but it is not. The temptation is to make the arts do something for us; make them work for us. But we should love them for their own sake. Love them by examining every nook and cranny of their distinctive practices. Love them by studying their history and theory. Love them by refusing to make them serve as tools for our theology or worldview. It is only through love that the church can support the arts, cultivate a relationship that can bear witness to Christ and the freedom He has won for us—a freedom to love art.

Join us next month in Charlottesville as we explore this and other important and challenging questions together. I will also give you an update on my search, which I discussed in God in the Gallery, for that most elusive and mysterious of creatures, the so-called “Christian artist.”

Dan Siedell, Guest Blogger

Information for Follow Up:

Daniel A. Siedell is Director of Theological & Cultural Practices at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is at work on a book on Christianity and modern art with theologian Willian Dyrness of InterVarsity Press.

To register for the Forum: click here

More about New City Arts: Click here

Read article in Christianity Today re NCAI