Essential reading for art lovers: the only literary collection on the role of art in our psychic, social, and political lives.

Museum attendance is on the rise at the same time that public funding for the arts is being dramatically cut. What do we gain from visual art and what do we stand to lose without it?

Dorothy Allison reveals how a painting in a Baptist church taught her as a child that art connects people from disparate backgrounds. Alfred Kazin reflects on his wanderings around New York's museums as a teenager. Mary Gordon finds that Bonnard's still lifes put in perspective her mother's struggle with illness and aging. These and other literary luminaries explore the place that visual art has found in their lives --as children and as adults.

For many of the contributors, visual art makes us see what we have not seen before; it surprises, transforms, and comforts us. There are other perspectives too: Critic Dave Hickey claims art has no deep moral purpose, and the artist should not have to create under this burden of inherent goodness. Art, he writes, is just a whole lot of fun and therein lies its revolutionary potential.

For anyone who has felt moved by the visual, this collection offers a delightful range of views on how and why art matters.

Other contributors include John Berger, Mark Doty, Arthur Danto, bell hooks, Peter Schjeldahl, and August Wilson.