The Arts Fuse Newsletter, February 19
Jonathan Blumhofer on the Arts Boldly Facing Dark Times. Reviews of "Captain America: Brave New World", "The Art of Looking" at the Harvard Art Museums, and Coming Attractions
From The Editor's Desk:
First, please read Jonathan Blumhofer’s splendid piece below on how the arts should confront the “New Age of Anxiety” as tremors of fear spread throughout the cultural landscape. Some artists are cancelling their appearances after Trump’s hammer-and-tong takeover of the Kennedy Center, motivated by his charges that the organization hosted drag shows and somehow subsidized “Chinese Communist Party propaganda.”
The response has been more subdued, at least so far, to new NEA guidelines revised to grease the rollout of nationalistic flapdoodle. Here is how American Theater characterized the ideological mugging: “Arts organizations that apply for NEA grants in FY 2026 will be required not only to sign on to the openly regressive agenda of the new administration to roll back progress on racial and cultural diversity and trans rights, but to discontinue any programs or efforts they have in place now along those lines at the National Endowment for the Arts.”
“Each day brings new troubles and concerns,” asks Blumhofer, “how should we proceed? Ideally with boldness, though that quality seems to be in short supply, especially in the arts world.” Will local theaters find the courage to confront Trump’s attempt to kneecap democracy? Grow enough of a spine to stage works that protest the authoritarian threat? Or will they serve up empowering distractions for audiences eager to escape the upheaval in the real world? Blumhofer mentions local productions of the operas of Brecht/Weill. It has been many years (decades?) since a Boston theater mounted plays in the Brechtian mode, selected dramas that proffered hard-hitting critiques of repressive economic and political powers-that-be that might upset our monied powerbrokers. Boston’s arts institutions are well poised to meet the moment, posits Blumhofer. Let’s hope they spring into action.
Reviewers as well as artists will be pressured to conform or collaborate. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda recently announced that he has decided to suspend his Washington Post Book World column. Among his reasons for the decision: “the new American president's antagonistic relationship with intellectual pursuits.” In the ‘90s, conservatives rightfully accused liberals of deliberately “dumbing down” American culture. Now Republicans are supersizing the stupidification of a nation. Will arts critics go along to get along?
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk
Arts Commentary: Art, Music, and the New Age of Anxiety
By Jonathan Blumhofer
However late the hour and however long the road ahead, the cause of standing for justice, knowledge, and freedom isn’t yet doomed. Along the way, let the arts comfort, inspire, instruct, and help lead. That’s what they’re here for.
Film Review: “Captain America: Brave New World” – ‘Tis New to Thee?
By Michael Marano
Captain America: Brave New World, which is loaded with potential for drama and commentary, has less weight and punch than a butterfly’s fart.
Visual Arts Review: “The Art of Looking” — The Evolution of Harvard’s Art History Department
By Lauren Kaufmann
The show may be a case of inside baseball, appealing to a small group of art history majors and museum lovers. But it offers a fascinating look at innovation at one of the country’s most revered, and most traditional, colleges.
Book Review: Surviving Stalin in “No Country For Love”
By Peter Keough
In this compulsively readable novel, a Ukrainian Jewish woman does what she needs to survive in the nationalistic, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic Stalin-era Soviet Union.
Coming Attractions through March 3 — What Will Light Your Fire
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
Book Review: "Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry" -- Into a New Clearing
By James Provencher
Besides giving us a multi-faceted portrait of Robert Frost that leaves the poet tantalizingly inscrutable, Adam Plunkett does what the best biographers of great writers do: send us back to the work with renewed curiosity and heightened appreciation.
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Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
