U.S. Culture

century, massive immigration from Europe caused schools to restructure and

expand their programs to more effectively incorporate immigrant children

into society. High schools began to include technical, business, and

vocational curricula to accommodate the various goals of its more diverse

population. The United States continues to be concerned about how to

incorporate immigrant groups.

The language in which students are taught is one of the most significant

issues for schools. Many Americans have become concerned about how best to

educate students who are new to the English language and to American

culture. As children of all ages and from dozens of language backgrounds

seek an education, most schools have adopted some variety of bilingual

instruction. Students are taught in their native language until their

knowledge of English improves, which is often accomplished through an

English as a Second Language (ESL) program. Some people have criticized

these bilingual programs for not encouraging students to learn English

more quickly, or at all. Some Americans fear that English will no longer

provide a uniform basis for American identity; others worry that immigrant

children will have a hard time finding employment if they do not become

fluent in English. In response to these criticisms, voters in California,

the state that has seen the largest influx of recent immigrants, passed a

law in 1998 requiring that all children attending public schools be taught

in English and prohibiting more than one year of bilingual instruction.

Many Americans, including parents and business leaders, are also alarmed

by what they see as inadequate levels of student achievement in subjects

such as reading, mathematics, and science. On many standardized tests,

American students lag behind their counterparts in Europe and Asia. In

response, some Americans have urged the adoption of national standards by

which individual schools can be evaluated. Some have supported more

rigorous teacher competency standards. Another response that became

popular in the 1990s is the creation of charter schools. These schools are

directly authorized by the state and receive public funding, but they

operate largely outside the control of local school districts. Parents and

teachers enforce self-defined standards for these charter schools.

Schools are also working to incorporate computers into classrooms. The

need for computer literacy in the 21st century has put an additional

strain on school budgets and local resources. Schools have struggled to

catch up by providing computer equipment and instruction and by making

Internet connections available. Some companies, including Apple Computer,

Inc., have provided computer equipment to help schools meet their

students’ computer-education needs.

Concerns in Higher Education

Throughout the 20th century, Americans have attended schools to obtain the

economic and social rewards that come with highly technical or skilled

work and advanced degrees. However, as the United States became more

diverse, people debated how to include different groups, such as women and

minorities, into higher education. Blacks have historically been excluded

from many white institutions, or were made to feel unwelcome. Since the

19th century, a number of black colleges have existed to compensate for

this broad social bias, including federally chartered and funded Howard

University. In the early 20th century, when Jews and other Eastern

Europeans began to apply to universities, some of the most prestigious

colleges imposed quotas limiting their numbers.

Americans tried various means to eliminate the most egregious forms of

discrimination. In the early part of the century, "objective" admissions

tests were introduced to counteract the bias in admissions. Some educators

now view admissions tests such as the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT),

originally created to simplify admissions testing for prestigious private

schools, as disadvantageous to women and minorities. Critics of the SAT

believed the test did not adequately account for differences in social and

economic background. Whenever something as subjective as ability or merit

is evaluated, and when the rewards are potentially great, people hotly

debate the best means to fairly evaluate these criteria.

Until the middle of the 20th century, most educational issues in the

United States were handled locally. After World War II, however, the

federal government began to assume a new obligation to assure equality in

educational opportunity, and this issue began to affect college admissions

standards. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the government

increased its role in questions relating to how all Americans could best

secure equal access to education.

Schools had problems providing equal opportunities for all because

quality, costs, and admissions criteria varied greatly. To deal with these

problems, the federal government introduced the policy of affirmative

action in education in the early 1970s. Affirmative action required that

colleges and universities take race, ethnicity, and gender into account in

admissions to provide extra consideration to those who have historically

faced discrimination. It was intended to assure that Americans of all

backgrounds have an opportunity to train for professions in fields such as

medicine, law, education, and business administration.

Affirmative action became a general social commitment during the last

quarter of the 20th century. In education, it meant that universities and

colleges gave extra advantages and opportunities to blacks, Native

Americans, women, and other groups that were generally underrepresented at

the highest levels of business and in other professions. Affirmative

action also included financial assistance to members of minorities who

could not otherwise afford to attend colleges and universities.

Affirmative action has allowed many minority members to achieve new

prominence and success.

At the end of the 20th century, the policy of affirmative action was

criticized as unfair to those who were denied admission in order to admit

those in designated group categories. Some considered affirmative action

policies a form of reverse discrimination, some believed that special

policies were no longer necessary, and others believed that only some

groups should qualify (such as African Americans because of the nation’s

long history of slavery and segregation). The issue became a matter of

serious discussion and is one of the most highly charged topics in

education today. In the 1990s three states—Texas, California, and

Washington—eliminated affirmative action in their state university

admissions policies.

Several other issues have become troubling to higher education. Because

tuition costs have risen to very high levels, many smaller private

colleges and universities are struggling to attract students. Many

students and their parents choose state universities where costs are much

lower. The decline in federal research funds has also caused financial

difficulties to many universities. Many well-educated students, including

those with doctoral degrees, have found it difficult to find and keep

permanent academic jobs, as schools seek to lower costs by hiring part-

time and temporary faculty. As a result, despite its great strengths and

its history of great variety, the expense of American higher education may

mean serious changes in the future.

Education is fundamental to American culture in more ways than providing

literacy and job skills. Educational institutions are the setting where

scholars interpret and pass on the meaning of the American experience.

They analyze what America is as a society by interpreting the nation’s

past and defining objectives for the future. That information eventually

forms the basis for what children learn from teachers, textbooks, and

curricula. Thus, the work of educational institutions is far more

important than even job training, although this is usually foremost in

people’s minds.

ARTS AND LETTERS

The arts, more than other features of culture, provide avenues for the

expression of imagination and personal vision. They offer a range of

emotional and intellectual pleasures to consumers of art and are an

important way in which a culture represents itself. There has long been a

Western tradition distinguishing those arts that appeal to the multitude,

such as popular music, from those—such as classical orchestral

music—normally available to the elite of learning and taste. Popular art

forms are usually seen as more representative American products. In the

United States in the recent past, there has been a blending of popular and

elite art forms, as all the arts experienced a period of remarkable cross-

fertilization. Because popular art forms are so widely distributed, arts

of all kinds have prospered.

The arts in the United States express the many faces and the enormous

creative range of the American people. Especially since World War II,

American innovations and the immense energy displayed in literature,

dance, and music have made American cultural works world famous. Arts in

the United States have become internationally prominent in ways that are

unparalleled in history. American art forms during the second half of the

20th century often defined the styles and qualities that the rest of the

world emulated. At the end of the 20th century, American art was

considered equal in quality and vitality to art produced in the rest of

the world.

Throughout the 20th century, American arts have grown to incorporate new

visions and voices. Much of this new artistic energy came in the wake of

America’s emergence as a superpower after World War II. But it was also

due to the growth of New York City as an important center for publishing

and the arts, and the immigration of artists and intellectuals fleeing

fascism in Europe before and during the war. An outpouring of talent also

followed the civil rights and protest movements of the 1960s, as cultural

discrimination against blacks, women, and other groups diminished.

American arts flourish in many places and receive support from private

foundations, large corporations, local governments, federal agencies,

museums, galleries, and individuals. What is considered worthy of support

often depends on definitions of quality and of what constitutes art. This

is a tricky subject when the popular arts are increasingly incorporated

into the domain of the fine arts and new forms such as performance art and

conceptual art appear. As a result, defining what is art affects what

students are taught about past traditions (for example, Native American

tent paintings, oral traditions, and slave narratives) and what is

produced in the future. While some practitioners, such as studio artists,

are more vulnerable to these definitions because they depend on financial

support to exercise their talents, others, such as poets and

photographers, are less immediately constrained.

Artists operate in a world where those who theorize and critique their

work have taken on an increasingly important role. Audiences are

influenced by a variety of intermediaries—critics, the schools,

foundations that offer grants, the National Endowment for the Arts,

gallery owners, publishers, and theater producers. In some areas, such as

the performing arts, popular audiences may ultimately define success. In

other arts, such as painting and sculpture, success is far more dependent

on critics and a few, often wealthy, art collectors. Writers depend on

publishers and on the public for their success.

Unlike their predecessors, who relied on formal criteria and appealed to

aesthetic judgments, critics at the end of the 20th century leaned more

toward popular tastes, taking into account groups previously ignored and

valuing the merger of popular and elite forms. These critics often relied

less on aesthetic judgments than on social measures and were eager to

place artistic productions in the context of the time and social

conditions in which they were created. Whereas earlier critics attempted

to create an American tradition of high art, later critics used art as a

means to give power and approval to nonelite groups who were previously

not considered worthy of including in the nation’s artistic heritage.

Not so long ago, culture and the arts were assumed to be an unalterable

inheritance—the accumulated wisdom and highest forms of achievement that

were established in the past. In the 20th century generally, and certainly

since World War II, artists have been boldly destroying older traditions

in sculpture, painting, dance, music, and literature. The arts have

changed rapidly, with one movement replacing another in quick succession.

Visual Arts

The visual arts have traditionally included forms of expression that

appeal to the eyes through painted surfaces, and to the sense of space

through carved or molded materials. In the 19th century, photographs were

added to the paintings, drawings, and sculpture that make up the visual

arts. The visual arts were further augmented in the 20th century by the

addition of other materials, such as found objects. These changes were

accompanied by a profound alteration in tastes, as earlier emphasis on

realistic representation of people, objects, and landscapes made way for a

greater range of imaginative forms.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American art was considered

inferior to European art. Despite noted American painters such as Thomas

Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, and John Marin, American visual arts

barely had an international presence.

American art began to flourish during the Great Depression of the 1930s as

New Deal government programs provided support to artists along with other

sectors of the population. Artists connected with each other and developed

a sense of common purpose through programs of the Public Works

Administration, such as the Federal Art Project, as well as programs

sponsored by the Treasury Department. Most of the art of the period,

including painting, photography, and mural work, focused on the plight of

the American people during the depression, and most artists painted real

people in difficult circumstances. Artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and

Ben Shahn expressed the suffering of ordinary people through their

representations of struggling farmers and workers. While artists such as

Benton and Grant Wood focused on rural life, many painters of the 1930s

and 1940s depicted the multicultural life of the American city. Jacob

Lawrence, for example, re-created the history and lives of African

Americans. Other artists, such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, tried to

use human figures to describe emotional states such as loneliness and

despair.

Abstract Expressionism

Shortly after World War II, American art began to garner worldwide

attention and admiration. This change was due to the innovative fervor of

abstract expressionism in the 1950s and to subsequent modern art movements

and artists. The abstract expressionists of the mid-20th century broke

from the realist and figurative tradition set in the 1930s. They

emphasized their connection to international artistic visions rather than

the particularities of people and place, and most abstract expressionists

did not paint human figures (although artist Willem de Kooning did

portrayals of women). Color, shape, and movement dominated the canvases of

abstract expressionists. Some artists broke with the Western art tradition

by adopting innovative painting styles—during the 1950s Jackson Pollock

"painted" by dripping paint on canvases without the use of brushes, while

the paintings of Mark Rothko often consisted of large patches of color

that seem to vibrate.

Abstract expressionists felt alienated from their surrounding culture and

used art to challenge society’s conventions. The work of each artist was

quite individual and distinctive, but all the artists identified with the

radicalism of artistic creativity. The artists were eager to challenge

conventions and limits on expression in order to redefine the nature of

art. Their radicalism came from liberating themselves from the confining

artistic traditions of the past.

The most notable activity took place in New York City, which became one of

the world’s most important art centers during the second half of the 20th

century. The radical fervor and inventiveness of the abstract

expressionists, their frequent association with each other in New York

City’s Greenwich Village, and the support of a group of gallery owners and

dealers turned them into an artistic movement. Also known as the New York

School, the participants included Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Franz

Kline, and Arshile Gorky, in addition to Rothko and Pollock.

The members of the New York School came from diverse backgrounds such as

the American Midwest and Northwest, Armenia, and Russia, bringing an

international flavor to the group and its artistic visions. They hoped to

appeal to art audiences everywhere, regardless of culture, and they felt

connected to the radical innovations introduced earlier in the 20th

century by European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. Some

of the artists—Hans Hofmann, Gorky, Rothko, and de Kooning—were not born

in the United States, but all the artists saw themselves as part of an

international creative movement and an aesthetic rebellion.

As artists felt released from the boundaries and conventions of the past

and free to emphasize expressiveness and innovation, the abstract

expressionists gave way to other innovative styles in American art.

Beginning in the 1930s Joseph Cornell created hundreds of boxed

assemblages, usually from found objects, with each based on a single theme

to create a mood of contemplation and sometimes of reverence. Cornell's

boxes exemplify the modern fascination with individual vision, art that

breaks down boundaries between forms such as painting and sculpture, and

the use of everyday objects toward a new end. Other artists, such as

Robert Rauschenberg, combined disparate objects to create large, collage-

like sculptures known as combines in the 1950s. Jasper Johns, a painter,

sculptor, and printmaker, recreated countless familiar objects, most

memorably the American flag.

The most prominent American artistic style to follow abstract

expressionism was the pop art movement that began in the 1950s. Pop art

attempted to connect traditional art and popular culture by using images

from mass culture. To shake viewers out of their preconceived notions

about art, sculptor Claes Oldenburg used everyday objects such as pillows

and beds to create witty, soft sculptures. Roy Lichtenstein took this a

step further by elevating the techniques of commercial art, notably

cartooning, into fine art worthy of galleries and museums. Lichtenstein's

large, blown-up cartoons fill the surface of his canvases with grainy

black dots and question the existence of a distinct realm of high art.

These artists tried to make their audiences see ordinary objects in a

refreshing new way, thereby breaking down the conventions that formerly

defined what was worthy of artistic representation.

Probably the best-known pop artist, and a leader in the movement, was Andy

Warhol, whose images of a Campbell’s soup can and of the actress Marilyn

Monroe explicitly eroded the boundaries between the art world and mass

culture. Warhol also cultivated his status as a celebrity. He worked in

film as a director and producer to break down the boundaries between

traditional and popular art. Unlike the abstract expressionists, whose

conceptual works were often difficult to understand, Andy Warhol's

pictures, and his own face, were instantly recognizable.

Conceptual art, as it came to be known in the 1960s, like its

predecessors, sought to break free of traditional artistic associations.

In conceptual art, as practiced by Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth, concept

takes precedent over actual object, by stimulating thought rather than

following an art tradition based on conventional standards of beauty and

artisanship.

Modern artists changed the meaning of traditional visual arts and brought

a new imaginative dimension to ordinary experience. Art was no longer

viewed as separate and distinct, housed in museums as part of a historical

inheritance, but as a continuous creative process. This emphasis on

constant change, as well as on the ordinary and mundane, reflected a

distinctly American democratizing perspective. Viewing art in this way

removed the emphasis from technique and polished performance, and many

modern artworks and experiences became more about expressing ideas than

about perfecting finished products.

Photography

Photography is probably the most democratic modern art form because it can

be, and is, practiced by most Americans. Since 1888, when George Eastman

developed the Kodak camera that allowed anyone to take pictures,

photography has struggled to be recognized as a fine art form. In the

early part of the 20th century, photographer, editor, and artistic

impresario Alfred Stieglitz established 291, a gallery in New York City,

with fellow photographer Edward Steichen, to showcase the works of

photographers and painters. They also published a magazine called Camera

Work to increase awareness about photographic art. In the United States,

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