![]() ![]() His bestselling novel, Looking Backward: 2000-1887, first published in 1888 by Houghton Mifflin, imagines just such an egalitarian society. A close reading of the book offers clues as to how Bellamy imagined the arts might develop in a culture where the many, rather than the privileged few, had access to arts education and the leisure time necessary to study, make, and enjoy it. What becomes of fine art in the ideal democratic society where citizens have equal rights and equal access to wealth? Where the arbiters of taste and style are not an elite subset selected by birthright or the knack for capital accumulation but are the people en masse? Perhaps some answers to these heady and long-standing questions can be found in the Utopian society envisioned by American author Edward Bellamy. ![]() Looking at Art in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward ![]()
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