I believe the arts, and an education in the arts, form the lynchpin of our democracy. And America's way of making art puts these values into practice. Art in this nation is not subsumed within one tradition or one culture but springs from a blending and borrowing from the hundreds of cultures that make up our complex democracy. In a recent speech at Harvard University, I compared life in America's diverse democracy to life along a border, where different cultures and traditions bustle and jostle among one another every day. A place where there exists free and uninhibited movement back and forth, expanding boundaries, and in so doing, creating new ideas, new sounds, new forms of expression.
Art is the currency of the border.
And the creation of new art in a border setting means acknowledging and accommodating many voices, many cultures and traditions. I spent many years as the Director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee, and I observed art making in the South up close for more than a quarter century. In a border society, art represents the safe channel of cultural exchange. A number of scholars have mapped these characteristics of border life, but I would assert that the most distinctive legacy of our diverse democratic heritage is a border society. Art is at the center.