Question: Competency

Analyze the connection between music, poetry, prose, and visual art to the modern world and workplace.

Instructions: As a team leader in the Creative Department, your art tends to be edgier and more experimental. Perhaps unsurprisingly, your latest cubicle display of modern art has caught your co-worker's attention. You've noticed the co-worker sighing a few times while passing your desk in the mornings. Now, you've received the following email:

As you have no doubt picked up on, I am perturbed by your latest cubicle "art." We work in a large agency, and I don't expect to agree with everyone on all matters. Nevertheless, I am reaching out to you in the hopes that you will kindly remove your current exhibition from the public eye. In my opinion, it is far below the standards of what should be considered art. Picasso and Monet are, without a doubt, rolling in their graves.

You feel very strongly that art should never be censored. You knew that your latest selection wouldn't be everyone's favorite, and that's fine.But you still want to defend the infinite nature of art and your right to display all of it.

You reflect on the tricky task ahead and the balancing act you'll have to embrace. After all, merely alienating your co-worker with insults would serve no purpose.You begin to sketch out a few questions that you think are essential to answer as part of your carefully composed email reply to your offended co-worker:

• Is there or should there be limits to creativity and artistic expression?

• What is the overlap between life, culture, and art?

• How can art of all types positively impact office productivity and success?

• How does an awareness of local and global culture ease the acceptance of art?

With your questions now composed, you feel ready to get to work. As you push "reply" on your co-worker's email, you remind yourself to be professional and polite. The best approach, you've decided, is to articulate your position clearly, supported by reasoned and deep analysis.