What does creativity add to human existence? A group of scholars from fields as disparate as psychiatry and art will address that question and consider the nature of creativity in the arts and sciences at "Creativity: A Symposium" April 18 at Cornell University. The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will run from 1:30 to 6 p.m. in Barnes Hall.

"What we hope to accomplish is to examine and explore the structure of creativity, how it occurs, what it's made of and what its connections are among the disciplines," said symposium organizer Victor Kord, Cornell professor of art. Kord said the multidisciplinary approach to the examination of creativity is essential, especially at a comprehensive university like Cornell. Symposium participants include scholars from the fields of medicine, art, psychology, architecture, theater and philosophy.

The presentation schedule on April 18 is as follows:

-- 1:30 p.m.: Introduction by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings and Kord.

-- 2 p.m.: "The Psychoanalytic Construction of Creativity" by Donald Kuspit, A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell and professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Kuspit, one of America's most distinguished art critics, is a winner of the prestigious Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism (1983) given by the College Art Association. He is a contributing editor at Artforum, Sculpture and New Art Examiner and is editor of Art Criticism. Kuspit, who has studied at the Psychoanalytic Institute of the New York University Medical Center, is author of Signs of Psyche in Modern and Postmodern Art (1994), Health and Happiness in Twentieth Century Avant-Garde Art (with Lynn Gamwell; Cornell University Press, 1996) and Idiosyncratic Identities: Artists at the End of the Avant-Garde (1996).

-- 2:30 p.m.: "Creativity and the Oyster's Pearl" by Dr. George Vaillant, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of research for the division of psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Vaillant, who has spent the last 28 years as director of the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University Health Service, is a leading researcher of adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism and personality disorder. His published works include Adaptation to Life (1977), The Wisdom of the Ego (1993) and The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited (1995).

-- 3 p.m.: "Transparency and Iridescence in Artistic and Architectural Creativity" by Henry Richardson, Cornell associate professor of architecture. A licensed architect, nationally certified city planner and urban designer, Richardson is principal of his own architecture and urban design firm. He has executed a broad range of domestic and overseas projects, including several master plans and urban designs for new towns, a high-technology petroleum research campus and multimedia digital classrooms.

-- 4 p.m.: "AprŽs-Post Fever: Novelty and Creativity" by Robert Scanlan, former literary director of the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. A freelance writer and director specializing in new work for the American stage, Scanlan will direct the world premiere of Carol Mack's In Her Sight at the 1997 Humana Festival of New Plays at the Actors' Theatre of Louisville. His directing credits include Beckett Trio, Oleanna, the Polish language premiere of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow and Beth Hanley's Crimes of the Heart in the People's Republic of China, and he has collaborated with playwright Mamet (The Cryptogram), composer Philip Glass (OrphŽe), and director Robert Wilson (Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken). He also was associate director of the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.

-- 4:30 p.m.: "Roman Holiday: A Journey of Visual Discovery" by Kay WalkingStick, Cornell associate professor of art. Her work has been exhibited in New York City at the June Kelly Gallery, the M-13 Gallery, and Bertha Urdang Gallery. Her recent exhibition, "Works on Paper," was shown at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida and the Jersey City, (N.J.) Museum. Her work appears in the catalog Native American Art Masterpieces (1996) and Lives & Works, Vol. II, also Prentice Hall publications' History of Art and Understanding Art and Lucy R. Lippard's book Mixed Blessings. She received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in Painting, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant in painting and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award. In 1992 WalkingStick held a residency at Rockefeller Conference and Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.

-- 5 p.m.: A panel discussion moderated by Howard Risatti, professor of art history and criticism at Virginia Commonwealth University. Risatti, whose scholarly background includes the study of music theory and composition as well as art history, has written numerous catalog essays and articles and a book on contemporary art criticism, Postmodern Perspectives: Issues in Contemporary Art (1990). He has written for The Art Journal, Artscribe International and Latin American Art Magazine and is the Virginia editor of The New Art Examiner and the Washington correspondent for Latin American Art and Artforum.

The symposium is sponsored by the Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large Program, Department of Art, University Lectures, Rose Goldsen Fund, Office of the Provost, Society for the Humanities, Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, Department of Architecture, Department of City and Regional Planning, the College of Architecture, Art and Planning and the Cornell Council for the Arts