Although the arts are often sidelined as electives in US education, discussed as secondary to more "important" disciplines, and even stereotyped as mere entertainment and leisure, this book applies interdisciplinary perspectives to emphasize and demonstrate the multifaceted ways in which the arts are indelible: foundational to who we are, to what we know, to how we know, and to how we interact with the world around us. This chapter describes what it means for something to matter, takes up foundational questions about the nature of art, and introduces the central argument of the book. The chapter draws on philosophical arguments and scientific research to argue that the arts cultivate a specific set of skills that enable us to better connect with the world: they sharpen our capacity for observation, foster our emotional intelligence, and encourage and enable our open-mindedness and flexible thinking. Moreover, they provide an avenue for self-reflection, expression, and belief revision. Ultimately, this chapter suggests that these cognitive and affective processes that are engaged through art not only enhance our relationship with art itself but also contribute to a richer life, helping us to navigate challenges and to find greater meaning in our everyday experiences.

Observation is a dynamic process important to our successful navigation of the world around us. It is not mere passive absorption of sensory input, but the ability to carefully attend to the richness, complexity, and interestingness of our daily experiences. This chapter suggests that engaging with the arts invites us to look more closely and intentionally, to notice patterns, to see nuance, and to seek the meaning of and in our observations. The chapter analyzes a plethora of empirical evidence across domains suggesting that observational and attentional skills can be developed through domain-specific arts training and may generalize beyond arts contexts. Trained artists, for example, often use distinct attentional strategies, exhibit greater attention flexibility and perceptual accuracy, and tend to process information more holistically than nonartists. Likewise, guided close-looking in visual arts contexts – whether in museums or classrooms – has been linked to improvements in clinical observational skills, diagnostic accuracy, and a willingness to engage with ambiguity. These capacities also underpin our abilities to experience empathy, to detect, interpret, and regulate our emotions, and to approach differences with curiosity, openness, and flexible thinking.

Can works of art teach us something, perhaps about ourselves, about the world, or about what matters? This chapter addresses whether and how the arts contribute to learning by drawing on insights from epistemology – the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge. It considers how the arts contribute to the various ways of knowing that philosophers distinguish: propositional knowledge (also called “know-that”), experiential knowledge, understanding, and skill-based knowledge (also called “know-how”). With respect to each, there are promising ways of working out how art may contribute to our epistemic growth. At the same time, each candidate type of knowledge faces challenges and complications that limit its ability to be the singular answer regarding learning from and through the arts. Ultimately, this chapter suggests that “know-how” – or skill-based knowledge – is an especially fruitful concept for understanding how we become epistemically better off through engagement with the arts. This chapter thus suggests that becoming epistemically better off through engagement with the arts is not about acquiring knowledge of facts, but rather about developing ways of seeing, perceiving, interpreting, and responding to the world more skillfully.

The arts are deeply entwined with a sense of self. This chapter examines the many ways in which artistic engagement allows us to discover, express, and explore who we are. While previous chapters focused on how the arts enhance our thinking, knowing, or understanding, this chapter turns toward the role of the arts in shaping who we become — and, in some cases, how we reclaim parts of ourselves. The chapter begins by exploring the concept of self-identity, and its relationship to aesthetic taste and sensibility. From there, it considers how the arts can be a catalyst for transformation — both personal and community-based — and what these shifts reveal about the dynamic relationship between identity and artistic experience.

This final chapter, rather than rehearsing the argument made thus far, reframes the discussion in a practical light in an effort to more concretely articulate mechanisms by which engagement and connection to the arts can be deepened and enriched. The chapter does so by highlighting four key “habits of mind” to engage in during art-appreciating and art-making: slowing down, embracing uncertainty, self-reflecting, and engaging in shared meaning-making.

Creativity and innovation involve moving beyond conventional solutions, preconceptions, disciplinary boundaries, and assumptions about materials. They rely on a style of thinking termed open-minded engagement: playful, nimble, and cognitively flexible, and receptive to and embracing of new ideas, values, beliefs, lifestyles, and cultures, but in a critical and bounded way. This chapter surveys philosophical and empirical literature to explore how such thinking is engaged and developed through the arts. It suggests that if you can embrace and accept that you may not quite know what could happen, pause on projecting your preconceptions, be open to what the artwork is saying to you on its own terms, you will surely engage more fully, come to understand more about the artworks and artist themselves, and deepen your own capacity for continued openness.

Art brings joy, happiness, and wellbeing. This chapter aims to show how the arts contribute to living a flourishing life. Of course, they do so by encouraging deep thinking, honing cognitive skills, and making life more interesting and rich with experiences. But they also make our lives happier and healthier, both physically and cognitively. The chapter begins by examining the question of what it could mean to “live a good life,” before turning to various strands of evidence showing the arts as expansive sources of wellbeing in our lives.

The arts are undeniably emotionally evocative. This chapter focuses on our complex emotional entanglement with the arts and describes the range of emotional experiences that people have with the arts, as well as how those experiences can foster learning, curiosity, and growth. It argues that because of their ability to express and evoke emotionally complex experiences, the arts are a fertile ground for the development of a critical set of cognitive skills associated with emotional intelligence: perceiving, interpreting, regulating, and acting on emotions experienced by oneself and others. Empirical evidence is marshaled to show that the arts present us with novel opportunities to observe and examine how emotions are expressed in varied, nuanced, or even exaggerated ways, which offers insight into the emotional experience of others. Additionally, the chapter shows that feeling and actively reflecting on a host of emotions evoked during art making and art appreciation can help us to recognize and appropriately label our emotions, which is key to healthy self-regulation.