Art Tells The Truth

I recently helped to organize a day-long reading of the complete Mueller Report at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. A number of local theatrical artists and local elected public officials participated in the event, and it was a great success.

A publication I founded, OLY ARTS, was also instrumental in sponsoring this event. Some people in my reading community and my artistic community have asked why arts people are involved in “politics.”

I’m not by nature a particularly political or partisan person. I only recently really started participating in questions related to national politics, and the reason I did so is that truth itself seems to be under attack recently, and the nature of truth is under attack. As an artist and a writer, I think it’s important for us to participate in upholding some common values. The truth may be hard to hear, it may even be painful, but we must start with the truth in order to grow and to create art and meaning. Here’s a longer explanation of our purpose in putting on this event, and the rationale for artists to be at the ramparts, defending truth. 

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OLY ARTS was established 4 years ago as a vehicle for reliable and professional journalistic coverage of events and cultural occasions that make our South Sound community rich in artistic experiences.

Art, at its core, tells the truth, or else it is not art. Artistic performances across our country, on every stage, communicate deep emotional and artistic truths which are difficult to articulate in any other medium. For this reason, the arts community is often the first victim when truth itself is discarded or abandoned.

Furthermore, one of the key hallmarks of journalism and a culture that understands journalism is a value for truth itself. Without a truthful understanding of factual information, we cannot create a shared cultural fabric and our common civic life decays.

Like many in our community and country, we have been saddened by a recent diminution of fact-based journalism and a weakening of understanding of the need for truth as a core value. Genuine and professional journalistic organizations, like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and even OLY ARTS, have been attacked in recent months for telling simple honest truths. In this environment, it is incumbent on citizens of all persuasions to stand up for basic truth telling.

This is doubly true for any organization that supports the arts. Artists tell the truth: if we do not tell the truth, we cannot claim to create or support worthy art.

The arts suffers when truth is not valued or received. Communities die when the truth is not told or understood.

Therefore, when a basic factual document, created by a non-partisan group of apolitical officials, is attacked for its very existence, the arts community has a responsibility to stand up and state the truth, without fear or favor.

The journalistic community bears an even greater responsibility to do so, as the communicators of verified truth to our broader culture.

OLY ARTS is fortunate to consider ourselves members of both the artistic and journalistic communities – so there is no greater task that we could have undertaken than to support a truth telling endeavor. It is a core part of the OLY ARTS mission to ensure that truth is foregrounded in all that we do.

We were very gratified to see a group of five community organizations, including the Washington Center for the performing arts, step forward to create an event that provided a purely educational truth telling experience for our corner of the American public in the south sound. We told the truth.

This is an important pivotal time for American democracy and we are glad that as a community we were able to come together to hear factual information about our elections and the ongoing attack on free and fair elections in the United States.

By supporting this event, we upheld the role of truth in the American life, and we helped to build a shared civic culture that can understand and embrace the deeper truths given to us every day by artists.

— Ned Hayes, OLY ARTS Founder

Art Tells The Truth was originally published on Ned Hayes