Several years ago I asked a friend, a painter who has lived in New York most of his life, what artists were discussing. “Politics,” he replied without hesitating. “We are moving from a period of personal alienation and private introspection into a time of renewed social concern,” he explained. “Sort of like the Thirties.” One might take exception to his summary of post-World War II art, but he seems to have been correct about the current situation. Recent art is saturated with imagery that is avowedly political, and in the art world ideology has become the touchstone for some forms of criticism.

One manifestation of the current taste for politics is the growing number of conferences, seminars, and lecture series that address some aspect of the relationship between art and political ideology. This season the University of the Arts in Philadelphia has been holding a series of seven lectures entitled “Art: Act of Political Conscience,” which sets out to “examine art as a political statement and its role in effecting social change.” The university—billed in its promotional literature as “the only university in the nation devoted exclusively to education and professional training in the visual and performing arts”—is the result of a recent union between the Philadelphia College of Art and the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts. Its president, Peter Solmssen, was for many years on the staff of the U.S.Department of State. The series was planned as part of Philadelphia’s “We the People” celebration of