This year's Charles Eliot Norton lecturer, artist Ben Shahn, has focussed attention on the problem of the creative artist at Harvard. The University's scholarly orientation, while having its positive values, does tend to stifle original art in the student.

Harvard has long emphasized the history of art, music, and English rather than painting, performance, or writing. Professors, moreover, are almost always scholars rather than creative artists. Occasional lectures by such men as Shahn, Robert Frost, Edwin Muir, and T.S. Eliot, however, have been both informative and encouraging. If the University would establish more visiting lectureships for artists as opposed to scholars, students would benefit from the different point of view, if only as a contrast with that of the scholar. Besides a possibly finer sensitivity to human problems which the mature artist attains through the creative experience, he offers the student a conception of the pertinence of art as well as of the possibility of using knowledge creatively and not merely passively. If such men as Aaron Copland, W. H. Auden, William Faulkner, and Arthur Miller could be encouraged to spend a year at Harvard, delivering lectures, or running a course if they wish, they would be a stimulating addition to the College.

Such lectureships do not require a million-dollar endowment fund as they last for only a year and, thus, can come from annual donations. The visiting lecturer should stay at one of the Houses, coming in close contact with the students there while strengthening the House structure. As an appointee for one year, the artist would not be required to divert his energies into scholarship. Both he and the student might well find the experience more than "(you may say) satisfactory."