“Americans see function. They do not see shape…

Michael Lewis SpeaksOur culture does not tell us about shape. Our culture does not give us enough words to express fully the sensory realm. And there’s a reason for that. … For 200 years, the primary aesthetic experience in America was verbal, not visual. … American culture is historically Puritan. … Our mood, culturally, begins in the relentlessly Puritan space of the Puritan Meeting House … a vessel for the spoken word.”

—Michael Lewis, the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art at Williams, speaking about “Visual Images in a Verbal Culture” during the first-ever Williams Thinking, a public lecture series launched over the summer.

See President Adam Falk’s “Teaching and Scholarship” for more on Williams Thinking.