“The arts aren’t just events to be gone ahead with or cancelled after a tragedy. One of the powers of great art is to try to make sense of difficult things. Toronto Globe & Mail critics look at the power of artforms – Dance, Music, Visual art, Literature, Theatre – to help people cope with tragedy.”

And The Boston Globe “asked people who create beauty to reflect on how work like theirs responds to the horrors of Tuesday”: those queried included John Harbison, Bill T. Jones, Oscar Hijuelos, James Taylor, sculptor Dimitri Hadzi, Sonic Youth member Kim Gordon, novelist Robert Parker, political humorist Kate Clinton, playwright Charles L. Mee, poet Robert Pinsky, musician/writer Jennifer Trynin, composer Deborah Henson-Conant, musical director Craig Smith, and Robert Brustein:

This is a time when art is most important because it complicates our thinking and prevents us from falling into melodramatic actions such as those we’re about to take. But this is the time when art is made tongue-tied by authority and when it’s a very small voice among hawkish screams. … The greatest thing that art can do in a time of crisis is to make us aware, not to turn us into our enemies.