Arts and Culture matter in new course offered at Fairfield U.

Instructor Stephanie J. Coakley, director of the Pequot Library in Southport, has devoted her career to working with diverse communities to improve lives through the power and wonder of the arts and culture. Her new course at Fairfield University discusses why arts and culture matter in the world as it is now.

FAIRFIELD — Director of the Pequot Library in Southport, Stephanie Coakley will be leading, “Engaging with the Creative Community: Why the Arts and Culture Matter,” a seminar through the Regina A. Quick Center’s Open MINDS Institute. The five-week course will run Tuesday afternoons March 7 through April 4 from 12 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.

A response to the growing concern over the unsatisfactory state of funding for the arts and culture in America, the course seeks to shed light on the increasing difficulties faced by leading flagship institutions such as theMetropolitan Opera, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and major museums and libraries throughout the United States, which are suffering from declining support and revenue streams, while striving to remain relevant and vibrant.

The course will also consider implications of budget cuts to the National Endowment of Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts and public television, examine how the United States arts funding picture compares to other countries, and will conclude with a visit to the Morgan Library and Museum in NYC for a guided tour of current art and rare book exhibitions.

Especially valuable to anyone with interest in the arts, philanthropy, and non-profit governance, this course will instill in participants a greater understanding of how important support for the arts is in today’s complex social-political environment.

Devoting her career to working with diverse communities to improve lives through the power and wonder of the arts and culture, Coakley’s current role as director of the Pequot Library is preceded by her role as director of Education and Community Partnerships with the Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona, where she co-founded theMuseum School for the Visual Arts, a public high school for artistically talented teenagers on the campus of the art museum and the first of its kind in the U.S.