Performing Arts Index (PAI) is a reference resource for the visual history of the performing arts. Encompassing performance traditions from all countries and periods, PAI is culled from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s comprehensive collection. In the future PAI will expand its database to images in other collections in NYC and elsewhere.
Director: Constance Old
email: cold@gc.cuny.edu
phone: (212) 246 - 0879
When psychologists investigate the arts, two prerequisites, more than any others, are indispensable for success. The explorers need the delicate hands of good surgeons, who can penetrate a body without destroying the order and functioning of the organs; and they need respect for what Rudolf Otto, speaking of religion, called the mysterium tremendum -- that is, the awe-inspiring secret. If they lack the delicacy of touch, they will noisily handle their data without caring enough about what they are doing to the phenomena they want to describe and explain. If they lack the respect, they may assume that they are dealing only with the ordinary, augmented perhaps a few degrees (p. v).
Rudolf Arnheim, 'The Power of the Center' (1982/1988).