art

Public art matters, because everyone — no matter their belief system or politics — deserves art. You deserve art you love and you deserve art that pisses you off and you deserve art that makes you think. We also deserve art that’s not subject to the whims of capitalism or individual taste; if we only fund art that’s “pleasing,” or “inoffensive,” we... See more

What ignorant people seem to think is that these kinds of Humanities programs are some kind of “liberal” undertaking and, from my experience, that is hogwash. I’ve been in front of audiences of all sizes in every nook and cranny of Montana — a seethingly “red” state by all such measures. For some places, whether places like schools and museums or e... See more

The public money has dried up, in other words, but so has a whole lot of the private money. You might not have noticed the ramifications quite yet, but you will. It’s in the increasingly ardent pleas from your local NPR station, of course, but it’s also just absence: the film festival or day camp or curated exhibition or concert series that just do... See more

For all of the distasteful rhetoric in the Substackosphere, what this format has taught me is that we people are capable of funding stuff directly. How that translates to the wider Art world, I don’t know, but I think there is a seed here. It’s challenging; for every person willing to throw $50/year at a newsletter written by someone they like, the... See more

Instead, each person should be able to take the money they’ve saved on taxes and pay for the stuff that matters to them : their own art, their own private schools, their own concierge doctors, their own backyards. That’s liberty . I find this type of thinking counter to pretty much everything I believe, but I also grew up in a place where a lot of ... See more

The difference between the workshops and a thing like Humanities is there isn’t layers and layers of bureaucracy and bullshit. Yes, our tax dollars fund things like the NEH and NEA, and should, but the results are almost invisible. I think the immediacy of direct communication like we have here make a big difference. When you can see a smiling face... See more

I think there were eight or ten approved and scheduled at the time of the cancellations. Communities rallied and I did a couple things for free and they all happened. Moving forward I think there will be challenges but I’m fortunate to have a newsletter audience who is very generous and seem committed to keeping me on the road doing what I do. That... See more

I keep thinking of a conversation I had last month with Caroline O’Donoghue, the brilliant author of The Rachel Incident . We were talking about the route she took to writing the book, and the prevalence of Irish authors in pop culture. She stopped the wandering conversation in the way you do when you want someone to be very clear about how things ... See more