The purpose of the Studio for Art, Faith & History is to encourage and equip communities of all sorts to restore the work of art to the places where they do their work—weaving the arts into the fabric of a community's life and identity.

The Studio focuses in particular on the place of the arts 

• in the life of the church,

• in the settings of learning and education, and

• in the civic settings where, in a pluralistic society, communities of faith must temper convictions with hospitality.

In all of its activities, the Studio weaves together the three terms of its name: 

• re-connecting Art with Faith, by putting the arts to work in the places of Christian community life, but also in places where believers can share common cause with neighbors of other faiths or of no faith;

• re-connecting Art with History, by encouraging art-making that is answerable to the themes and narratives of historic Christian tradition, by revisiting the media and genres of the rich pre-modern heritage of sacred art and drama (particularly in Italy); and by encouraging modes of production that imbed the work of artists in the communities they serve;

• re-connecting Faith with History, by creatively adapting the practices and disciplines of the historic church and its saints to twenty-first-century faith and community life.
  

The “Studio” evokes a sense of being a workshop for exploring how pre-modern conditions for art-making may have new timeliness in the conditions of post-modern society.

An icon for the Studio might well be the Belltower of the Duomo in Florence, whose every aspect of aesthetic form and decorative beauty concerns the work of human being. The medallions encircling the Belltower in their groups of sevens

• celebrate the arts that enhance our collective life as humans (the arts of building, weaving, painting, sculpting; the liberal arts of language and thought; the skills of agriculture and navigation);

• underline the virtues of character needful for life together (prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude; faith, hope, charity);

• honor the sacraments and ceremonies that give narrative shape and purpose to our collective as well as personal life (baptism, confession, eucharist, marriage, the process of dying, and so forth; the festivals that punctuate the church year and mark the annual cycles of the earth).

The visual and performing arts were for many centuries embedded in these shared and common arts of human being. The Studio for Art, Faith & History hopes to play a small part in revitalizing such a place for the arts.