Veteran Arts Admin Bob Booker Has Some Words Of Advice As He Retires

“In regards to arts advocacy in general, we need to take a new approach that places the arts as a vital, engaging activity of tremendous value to Americans.  Too often we approach advocacy and communication with our heads bowed and our hands out: “Please sir, can you save the arts? Can you save my organization that has been in the red for years and would you maybe consider following your state’s policy that requires arts programming in schools?”  We are too timid, too afraid of offending and are perceived as impotent, ineffectual and incompetent.”

Chuck Close, Marina Abramovic, Kara Walker And Others Condemn Calls To Cancel Dana Schutz Show In Boston

The National Academy artists wrote in response to Boston protesters asking the ICA to cancel the Schutz show because of her painting Open Casket, which is of the open casket and broken face of Emmett Till and was roundly criticized at the Whitney Biennial. The painting is not in the ICA show. The artists wrote, “It is also of the utmost importance to us that artists not perpetrate upon each other the same kind of intolerance and tyranny that we criticise in others.”

With Technology Comes Power. But It Might Make Us Less Happy

“Lives of artificial bliss handed to us on a platter of biochemical and neuroelectronic manipulation may well turn out to be stifling, unchallenging lives, and the human imagination, if it is not stunted and stupefied by virtual reality and other illusions, is likely to find unpredictable ways to subvert them. We will have found out that gods are never happy.”