The Aesthetics for Birds blog (run by Christy Mag Uidhir; slogan derived from Barnett Newman's dictum that "aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds") begins its guest blogger series with Jesse Prinz's post, "Wonder Works: Renovating Romanticism About Art":
Among the many divides one can find among competing theories of art, none is wider and more ideologically entrenched than the gulf between experiential theories and various forms of institutionalism. Experiential theories say that something counts as art in virtue of the kind of experience it affords, such as a distinctive emotional state. Institutional theories emphasize the context of presentation--to a first approximation, something becomes art on this view when it is places in a gallery, or the equivalent. Here I want to suggest, heretically, that the experiential theories are right, but also that they can be reconciled with the institutional approach.
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