The Arts Sector

The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts can lift us up.

~Former U.S. Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

Art as Witness

Art marks the comings and goings of ages past and imagines those to come. Humankind has expressed itself in the arts--from the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, the eighteenth century BCE poem Epic of Gilgamesh, and the many forms of pottery and jewelry found in the remains of ancient cultures throughout the world, to the myriad of art forms in the 21st century that encompass motion pictures, digital photography, computer art, and experimental novels. Art is an enduring cultural phenomenon.

Art can, with words or wordlessly, through sound or in silence, shout a message, break a heart, invoke a laugh, evoke a tear, motivate, agitate, and elevate. And art can simply exist—a witness to joy and suffering, to hardship and hope, to what it is to be human in a given time and place.

In this section you will find a Compassion Reader that reflects the arts, a listing and description of our Charter for Compassion Arts Partners, an annotated bibliography and notes and links to webinars sponsored by the Arts Sector.  In addition, in this section we have three different categories of offerings. Think of these as different rooms within a museum.