{"id":400316,"date":"2025-10-17T15:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T19:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/?p=400316"},"modified":"2025-10-17T15:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T19:29:10","slug":"art-is-the-path-to-a-better-world-graduating-students-hear-from-patricia-bovey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/2025\/10\/17\/art-is-the-path-to-a-better-world-graduating-students-hear-from-patricia-bovey\/","title":{"rendered":"Art is the path to a better world, graduating students hear from Patricia Bovey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Patricia Bovey<\/strong>, a leading voice in Canadian arts and culture, received an honorary degree at a ¿ì²¥ÊÓƵ Fall Convocation ceremony on Oct. 16.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Brandon Vickerd<\/strong>, dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design<\/a> (AMPD), introduced Bovey by highlighting her five decades of advancing the role of the arts in Canadian society through her work as an art historian, museum director, gallery curator and senator. Her career, he noted, \u201creflects her unwavering belief in the power of art to heal, unite and inspire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bovey embodied that belief in her address to graduands. \u201cCreative expression is everywhere and needs to be seen, heard and cherished,\u201d she said, emphasizing how the arts have measurable \u2013 even life-saving \u2013 benefits. Research, she shared, shows that arts attendees live two years longer, use less health care, miss fewer days of work and recover faster after elective surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She then expanded on these tangible effects to highlight the deeper role of the arts in shaping society. \u201cThe arts truly have a leading place in society\u2019s future,\u201d she said. \u201cArt expresses the humanity within everyone in this room, within this University, our communities, our country and globally. Art portrays our place, our time and society \u2013 its beauty, crises and challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bovey reflected on how, long before national inquiries or reconciliation initiatives, artists were using their work to reveal uncomfortable truths. She pointed to Rebecca Belmore,<\/strong> whose performance and installation works Vigil<\/em> and The Named and the Unnamed<\/em> drew attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women, and Joane Cardinal-Schubert, whose 1989 installation The Lesson<\/em> critiqued the residential school system decades before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission brought the issue to national attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These examples, she said, show that the arts are not just a reflection of society but a force that shapes it \u2013 a force that graduands can now join. She emphasized that the arts are integral to every dimension of contemporary life and told graduands their own contributions would be, too. \u201cYour new skills are fundamental to all of society,\u201d she said. \u201cWe certainly need you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n