Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Essays

Dream a Vision

Last night, before going to bed in Houston, I watched (for the third or fourth time) the movie, The Legend of Bagger Vance. You learn something each time a moment is revisited that you think you know well. Last night it was one line (seemingly about golf but really about so much more in life), “It is something where you cannot win; you only play.” What was not said (but certainly implied) was: “And how you play the game is what you are and will become. Your vision is a point to reach in the future!”

When the young golfer finally is honest with himself and the world, Bagger, the caddie and philosopher, walks away into the Southern sunset (a little overdone but effective), only knowing what happens by the sound of the cheers. All that is left is a fading image of Bagger at the water’s edge, after performing a few playful dance steps.

Then I went to sleep, dreaming of an unfinished vision that I have had while awake. I dreamed of a downtown art museum for Waco where all could come and see visions by established and emerging artists, helping all of us “play-the-game of this imaginative life where an individual might become better for the experience.” It is a vision that I had while director of the local art museum and it keeps me going to countries around the world, helping to fuel other art museums into being or improve those already established. I see art museums being centers for ideas, images and dreams embodied in actual works of art. Any and every citizen can see, touch, hear, walk around and breathe a work of art. Can you get this while sitting in a classroom, listening to a professor tell you about a work of art or reading this article? No. Experiencing works of art is like sex. It cannot be done virtually. Education has always been the stuff (the data) where wisdom can be formulated but it is coming face to face with art (that inner spirit of the imagination) that sets those ideas and images ablaze and fires some spirits to action.

Art does not change the world. It changes the visions of men and women in the world. Then, through THEIR actions, the game of life can be played more beautifully.

So I dreamed again of my vision, a finished downtown art museum. Many cities have found that the critical element of downtown development is moving the art museum, a symphony hall, a theater or other arts establishments to the center of town is the beginning of the inner life of a city. I watched it happen in my hometown of Pittsburgh. I researched its happening in Dallas (with its “edifice complex” after the shooting of Kennedy and the moving of the art museum from Fair Park to downtown), Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston and other Texas cities, large and small. A new art museum is not the 90% of why businesses moves back downtown. It is the critical 10% that starts the process. It is the flame that burns in the hearts of those who make the vision solid. So with those thoughts in my dream, I saw this vision.

My dream time is now or sometime in the future. Visions are timeless. The new building (and it must be a new structure by an architect of immense imaginative stature), a new vision for Waco which will expand the Victorian and Southern architecture that has permeated every so-called “new building”. Walk with me through the front doors, through galleries open as each side where the best of the best works of art are experienced. Behind the public’s view are studios where individuals can create their own best. As we return outside, there are manicured grounds to stroll within and dream of new visions. In a large courtyard we find ten-foot sculpted figures standing with their arms outstretched, reaching to the sky, glorying in life. The figures are of people that have made Waco more than what it is by expanding our creative world: Robert Wilson, Kermit Oliver, Karl Umlauf, Paul Baker, Bernard Rapaport, Ann Richards, William Cowper Brann, Robert Fulghum,  Lyndon Olson, Francis Sturgess, Madison Cooper, Michael Johnson, Calvin Smith and many more. No hands touch but the closeness links them together in a forest of giants, with only the open blue above to diminish their stature. It is a magical place where children of all ages can play and dream. Then I awoke from my dream, drove back to Waco, noticed that the purchased ground downtown was still empty, and smiled. I know that the vision is possible. It has been done in other cities.