Cultivating the aesthetic mindset

Research-based civic engagement plus good old common sense conversations

I spent several days in Ann Arbor during a week so cold that even Michiganders complained about how cold it was. The temperature hovered in the single digits at night. Each morning, I awoke to more snowfall and braced for the arctic chill by insulating myself with two pairs of gloves, two hats, two pairs of socks, long underwear, multiple layers under wool sweaters, and an itchy Icelandic wool scarf. My unprotected cheeks took a beating, though, as I trudged down State Street each day alongside students scurrying to class on treacherous snow packed sidewalks covered with brown slush.

I’ll travel to Michigan many times over the next 18 months as the Visiting Artist for Art & Civic Engagement at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, so I’ll experience the full gamut of Michigan weather. I hear the summers are glorious in the Wolverine State so I’m hoping someone invites me to their lakeside cabin in the Upper Peninsula.

My engagement with UMMA entails multiple components dedicated to creating space in the museum for conversations across the political divide that ask, What does it mean to be American? How do we create a flourishing society for all of us? How do we repair the social fabric of our country? How do we reorient our social norms away from the outrage, fear, and hatred that has driven us apart toward the care, kindness, and curiosity that helps us see each other as fellow humans who share the same kinds of struggles and aspirations?

In 2016, when I first started inviting my political opposites to my home for dinner, I had no formal training in mediation, conflict resolution, or any of the social sciences. I’d read books like Strangers In Their Own Land, Hillbilly Elegy, and The Gilded Rage and I’d watched plenty of interviews of white working class voters in small town diners and even watched a couple Trump rallies from the comfort of my living room. But I wanted to ask my own questions. I wanted to talk face-to-face with people who thought differently from me and try to understand their views. I wanted to see if we could connect on some level despite our differences.

I organized these dinners by gut instinct. However, once the national project started gaining a little notoriety, I felt I needed to educate myself on how the brain worked and the science behind how we form relationships and co-exist in a civil society. I voraciously read research-based books like Belonging, Your Brain On Art, and The Art of Gathering and research papers by numerous social and political scientists about intergroup contact theory, tribalism, and so on. I became an amateur social scientist!

Reading the research has helped immensely as I devise creative conversations spaces aimed at exposing our shared humanity while downplaying our political identities. I check in with my right-leaning friends for regular gut checks, too. The most important thing, though, has been to use good old fashioned common sense. I don’t need research to tell me to treat people with kindness and respect.

One of the greatest challenges I have faced when organizing conversations across the political divide is making sure conservative views are evenly represented. That challenge dramatically increases when organizing cross-political conversations in an art museum, which many feel is a bastion for liberal elites. Fortunately at UMMA, I am working with a group of people who are committed to creating space for honest, respectful conversations aimed at understanding and connection, not persuasion. They are reimagining the ways in which a museum can be an inviting and comfortable part of the community, and not hallowed ground, by putting “people first, objects second.”

Art is an essential element of the conversations over dinner. I passionately believe in the power of art to spark curiosity about each other and the world, to tap into our deepest emotions and help us express our sorrow and joy, to help us see one another as humans.

I’m not talking about the Art World, though, which many also see as a haven for liberal elites. I don’t mind this depiction most of the time because I am one of those liberal elites who travels thousands of miles to experience art in far flung places, loves a fancy dress gala, and leans politically left.

And, I have sometimes felt perplexed by what the Art World deems important and relevant. And, I have often felt excluded. The Art World isn’t for everyone, but art and the aesthetic mindset are.

“The aesthetic mindset means you move about in the world in a way that’s curious, and in a way that encourages playful exploration, sensorial awareness, and an interest or passion in making, or beholding the arts.” (From Your Brain On Art.)

I have tried to cultivate an aesthetic mindset in myself, which has helped me grow into an increasingly better version of myself and I have flourished. My ambition is to create a space in the museum that allows others to cultivate their aesthetic mindset and to flourish, too.