OUR HISTORY

Why the name, 9 Muses?

An organization cannot create imagination. But it can nurture creativity and lay the groundwork for it. The 9 daughters of Zeus and the Titan Mnemosyne presided over the arts and sciences and were the goddesses of all knowledge of things that had come to pass. Their domains included literature, dance and music and also history and the sciences.

But conditions have become increasingly difficult for artists, writers and other creative workers and the unity of knowledge has been increasingly replaced by Two Cultures, the humanities and the sciences, separate and often hostile.

The ancient Muses were not only the embodiments of their domains of art and science, but were its sponsors and protectors. There is no equivalent in our world today. In many cities across the country, once vibrant urban Arts scenes are threatened by high costs of living and shrinking availability of resources.

Art can be considered the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, and many practices fit this description. Programs that link creative work to the broader community– including arts education in schools, the availability of community centers and performance spaces for rehearsals, workshops and performances, and adult programs in the arts and writing – have historically provided great benefits to the public, but are becoming less and less available. 

Time and resources to allow original or contrarian approaches in the arts, writing or critical thought is particularly difficult to find, resulting in loss of some of the most potentially transformative and important creative work and ideas.

In addition, alienation between the Two Cultures of modern intellectual life is a long-standing problem that is in many ways getting worse. The idea that there is unity of knowledge, scientific and artistic, has never been stronger in theory but weaker in our lived experiences. This divide has profound consequences for society, including distortions in political life and widely held views about health. At the same time, the industrialized world has experienced a remarkable wave of worsening health, characterized by new epidemics related to life-style: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, cancer, opioid addiction. 

Two Cultures and Public Health

Are there links between our worsening public health and the impoverishment of culture, loss of outlets for creativity and the cultural divide between the Arts and Sciences? 

Traditional medical or nutritional models have not effectively managed or even slowed the epidemics related to obesity and sedentary life-style over the past 30 years. These problems, which have become the leading public health issue in the U.S. and internationally, are more accurately seen as deriving from the fabric of modern life - the “obesigenic environment”.

The divide between the Two Cultures – wherein the spirit of artistic imagination is generally lacking in health science practices and knowledge of medical science is often absent in the arts community – and the absence of both creative expression and scientific knowledge in the general public may be part of the problem. The benefits of creative activity on general health have been strongly supported by many studies, but this field has still not received sufficiently rigorous or optimal scientific evaluation to convince medical practitioners, governmental bodies, or private payers. This deficiency of research evidence is arguably more an artifact of scholarship rather than a fundamental problem in showing benefit.