As I write comes news that the U.S. Senate has confirmed President Obama's nominations for new leadership of the federal agencies charged with setting the national course in the arts and humanities. Broadway producer Rocco Landesman now takes the helm as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and former Congressman and Princeton faculty member Jim Leach assumes the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Along with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, these two organizations help coalesce energies in the arts and humanities, advance their agendas in Congress and to the electorate, and provide essential grants for wide-ranging cultural organizations across the nation, including the Princeton University Art Museum. This new leadership is welcome at a time when the arts seem to be more integrally linked to broader policy-making than has been the case for some years.

At the time of his nomination, Landesman commented, “Art is essential to the civic, economic, and cultural vitality of our nation. It reflects who we are and what we stand for—freedom of expression, imagination, and vision.” This touches on what can be termed the intrinsic and the extrinsic value of art. The former speaks to the power of art on its own terms—what esteemed art historian and curator Kirk Varnedoe described as art’s power to “make you pay attention to things you take for granted, make what you think you know be strange to you, and thereby change your relation to life’s actualities and its possibilities.” Approached in these terms, art occupies a place that is central to our experience as humans, no mere window dressing once our essential needs are met but a concern that is fundamental to our humanity.

I sometimes have felt that too much is made of the extrinsic argument—one based on measures of economic impact—at the expense of arguing for art on its fundamental humanistic terms. Perhaps optimally both arguments should be advanced in tandem. Certainly the economic argument has cropped up a good deal of late: arts and cultural institutions have been eager to identify the economic contributions made by our sector (the numbers of jobs held by artists and those who work in the arts, the tax dollars generated by those who visit museums, symphonies, dance companies, etc.). Many in the arts have been disturbed to see the limited number of federal stimulus dollars intended for the arts—a "mere" $50 million in direct support—and even more, the negative rhetoric attached by some in the media and in Congress to that allocation: do the thousands of atrisk jobs in the arts matter less than jobs in other sectors of the economy? Do the families depending on them count for little?

All of these issues certainly play out here in Princeton. The exhibitions the Museum mounts combine the intrinsic and the extrinsic, responding to our belief in questions worth asking of art and of ourselves while carrying with them budgets that employ local contractors or purchase the materials needed to build out the galleries. The 90,000 or more visitors who visit the Museum each year contribute meaningfully to the health of the local economy, shopping from local merchants, dining in local restaurants, and parking in local garages. Many of our regional partners in the arts are especially challenged by declines in arts endowments or in corporate and private philanthropy, and our Museum is far from immune to these challenges.

The proof of whether the Museum and regional arts organizations more generally merit public and private investment is ultimately in the doing. Obviously I’m a believer: for me, art speaks with unrivaled power and complexity, and Princeton offers unique possibilities for sharing these virtues with our students, the broader community, and the many who visit Princeton each year. I hope you will join us in exploring the power of art to shape life experience and build community—and to strengthen the economy in troubled times.

James Christen Steward Director