This publication contains a conversation about art and drawing between a university professor of arts and a former director of a public school cultural arts program. As part of the National Humanities Faculty Why Series, the book is intended to help students, teachers, and citizens maintain and improve their intellectual vigor and human awareness and to help them reflect on the purpose, methods, and usefulness of a wide range of human endeavors. The dialogue focuses on drawing as a personal experience of great richness and as an aspect of mankind's ceaseless need to externalize, to trap the fleeting experience. The nature of art, its preciousness, its unpredictability, and its power to endure are discussed. The art of Donatello, Pollock, Chartres, and paintings by Illinois farm wives are studied. The conversation also includes a discussion about art history and its role in the high school curriculum. A bibliographical note cites resource materials that are useful to teachers and students interested in drawing. (Author/RM)