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Peter Sellars’ Arts Medal Acceptance Speech

This is a copy of Peter Sellars’ Arts Medal Acceptance Speech. Sellars ’80, one of the leading theater, opera, and television directors in the world today, received the 2001 Harvard Arts Medal. The award was presented to Mr. Sellars by President Neil Rudenstine on May 5 as part of ARTS FIRST 2001, the ninth annual celebration of the arts at Harvard University, May 3–6, 2001. The Harvard Arts Medal was created to honor a distinguished alumnus/a or faculty member who has achieved excellence in the arts and who has made a special contribution through the arts to education or the public good.

Peter Sellars: What a way to come back here after 20 years. Thank you very much. This means a lot. I just have had the most amazing two days. Let me just say one word about this ARTS FIRST thing you guys are doing, it’s so moving to see everybody digging in and to feel that most people who are practicing this weekend are themselves lawyers, doctors, you know, future titans of politics and so on, and we’re seeing them engaged in the practice of the arts across this weekend.

You know one of the reasons that I came here was there was no theatre department and I loved that about Harvard, and in fact, there’s a little story from an elderly man who has taught the last three generations of master dancers in the north of the island of Bali, he makes a distinction between a good artist, an excellent artist, and a great artist. The good artist knows all the steps of the dance, knows the music inside and out, and can execute everything flawlessly. The excellent artist knows all the moves, you know is in complete physical command, knows the music inside and out, can execute everything flawlessly, and knows the inner meaning. But the great artist knows all the moves, can execute everything flawlessly, is a master of the music, knows the inner meaning, and is a farmer. Definitely keep the day job.

When we say ARTS FIRST, I actually think what it means more deeply is that at the moment, we’re living on a planet that is in a kind of political and economic stalemate, standstill. So many things that we feel need to move forward are in some way stopped. And actually, what’s missing, again and again and again, is the cultural ingredient. Because the arts have been placed to the side as the decorative phenomena, as the dessert, as the thing that comes later, the option, the entertainment for a bored leisure class.

The central role that the arts were meant to play, as the very way in which we communicate with each other, because in the age of information we have precious little communication, the actual way in which the most difficult things on the planet can be faced and shared, in which we find the language with which to speak of the unspeakable, in which we can actually describe to each other the most difficult things we’re facing, and find a common ground among people who truly disagree deeply, that’s why the arts were made.

The arts are missing in action right now from this society. They occupy the arts pages of the newspaper, they occupy the National Endowment for the Arts, they occupy the theaters, they do not yet occupy the streets, and they do not yet occupy the boardrooms. The power of the arts at Harvard is to change both of those things. The idea that the people who will occupy the boardrooms are this weekend performing in ARTS FIRST at Harvard is powerful. And I would like to suggest to you folks, that its not just for weekends, that the intelligence, the awareness, the depth, the insight and the human faith, please retain that as you become the CEO of a corporation. Retain that knowledge and extend it.

Our task now is to create a way in which the humanities are part of the practice of the sciences as they always were for the ancient Greeks, for the Persians, for the Chinese, for the Renaissance Italians, that is the fact that the practice of the humanities is not separable from the practice of the sciences, its not separable from the practice of economics, its not separable from the practice of theology. In fact your very idea of what business is is shaped by your cultural awareness rather than your cultural blindness, by your cultural sophistication rather than your cultural ignorance. This is what globalization requires, it is a profound level of cultural insight that is missing in action at this moment.

Let’s take the word living, let’s talk about living for a moment, and let’s talk about what we are offering people all over the world who are drinking in America or its being forced down their throat with a syringe, what are we offering? And what are offering ourselves and our own children and grandchildren besides a narcotic culture? For me, I look to Harvard in these next years for the leadership that is going to deeply embed arts practice in the practice of public policy, in the practice of medicine, in the practice of business, in the practice of theology. What I look forward to this institution using its leadership capacity for is actually to build those bridges, to bring the human faith back to our practices in these other fields, to actually say that is what Harvard has always stood for and that is what Harvard will now step forward and advance.

The imagination, the creativity that it is going to take to create the kind of new structures that are able to reach across disciplines, that are able to reach across cultural lines, this is what Harvard has to take up. This is where the leadership is required because as was said earlier on this platform by this extraordinary outgoing humanist, and I say outgoing in every sense Neil, the fact is the bridges and the links are informally present yes, but that is not going to be enough. What is clear is we cannot go into the next century with the old structures in place, they are not sufficient for the conversations that are underway already.

The first year of the Vietnam peace talks, 1975 in Paris they spent the first year discussing the shape of the table. What is the table at which we can all sit down and speak as equals. I’m looking to Harvard to propose the shape of the table. This next generation is not going to solve the problems that are confronting the world, that are urgent as a result of globalization, this generation is going to be the first generation to simply hold the negotiations. And so this generation needs to find a table. That table needs to have a shape. And Harvard University is going to be the place that shapes the table.

Thank you very much.

(A pdf version is available.)