“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
The MFA is the new MBA 1, according to Daniel Pink, and it might even be the new MDiv 2.
Pink portrays artists’ conceptual skills, developed through drawing, color theory and eye-hand discipline, as essential to today’s business skill set. America’s boardrooms have begun to listen. Corporations like General Motors are training employees with workshops to develop their conceptual thinking skills.
In this morning’s New York Times one workshop teacher talks about what happens when he goes into a Fortune 500 corporation and teaches the employees to draw. Brian Bomeisler says that in teaching people how to draw, “I am teaching them an entirely new way to see. They unbox their minds and absorb what’s really there, with all of the complexity and beauty.”
Bomeisler sounds like a minister. After all, one of the church’s missions is to teach people how to see with new eyes. This blog carried an article ‘With Eyes to See New Life’ just two weeks ago. The 21st century church encourages the formation of merciful eyes because it seeks a merciful heart for the world. The church’s aim is to show the world what the world ‘most needs to see,’3 in all of its global complexity. And so, as the church moves forward in its 21st century mission, the MFA may just be the new MDiv.
On View: Contemplation I by Jerome Lawrence. 24×36, acrylic on canvas. BFA, Georgia State University. Jerome Lawrence’s solo exhibitions in Georgia include galleries such as Sabra Gallery, Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech, Chances Gallery, City Gallery East, VSA Arts for All Gallery, and others. His artwork is part of the documentary Shadow Voices & Building on Faith by Mennonite Media, and he has been interviewed by CNN news, WXIA-TV and WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jerome Lawrence’s work was featured in Visual Preludes 2006, an exhibition of Episcopal Church & Visual Arts for the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, Columbus, Ohio, 2006.
1 Masters of Fine Arts, Masters of Business Administration. Daniel Pink is the author of A Whole New Mind.
2 Masters of Divinity, the degree held by many ordained priests and ministers
3 Frank Burch Brown, Gesa Elsbeth Theissen, Theological Aesthetics, A Reader, 2004, Wm. Eerdmans, p. 268.