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Henson and Mills represent very different sensibilities, yet what is most striking about these lectures is their common ground. Both strongly assert the centrality of art to human life, its crucial importance at the core of lived experience and knowledge, in the face of a society in which it is most often claimed that art is a luxury, a kind of optional add-on that is extrinsic to the serious business of reality. Both attacked the utilitarian mindset and language of politics, claiming that its very language constricts our human perceptions and possibilities, making us smaller than we are in a time when we need more than ever to reach beyond ourselves to cope with the challenges that constitute our future. And both called for art to be fundamentally integrated into the education of our children, as a matter of urgency: for their individual and for our social good.
– Alison Croggan talking about Bill Henson and Jonathan Mills http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2010/08/matter-of-art.html