"'For decades, the Venice Biennale has symbolized artistic freedom, dialogue and international exchange,' the letter states. 'It should remain a place where art illuminates truth, memory and responsibility rather than serving as a vehicle for propaganda.'"
www.prnewswire.com/news-release...
Artists of all disciplines are celebrated for their work but unseen as thinkers. That's the loneliness I mean.
Let's do something about that.
open.substack.com/pub/randallw...
"Replacing the three F-15E jets that were shot down over Kuwait will cost the equivalent of food for 125,000 Americans, or health care for 100,000 children, over the course of a year."
www.salon.com/2026/03/08/w...
#QuitGPT
ChatGPT has been weaponized in more ways than one.
OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman and his wife donated $25 million to a Super PAC supporting Donald Trump (MAGA Inc.).
CEO Sam Altman also contributed to Trump's 2025 Inaugural Fund.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...
"Stealing the future and concealing the theft — capitalism’s method, which, according to this well-argued book, is incompatible with sustaining the global climate and democracy."
artsfuse.org/325311/book-...
A working artist (a painter, a poet, a composer, a choreographer, a novelist) recognized and even celebrated in their field can still feel completely unseen as a thinker.
The discipline rewards the output, not the mind behind it.
Let's do something about that.
randallwhite.substack.com
In 'Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945,' hope and fear do not feel mutually exclusive, but rather a collective response to the authoritarianism and repression being exerted on the country.
The exhibition opens March 7, 2026 in Minneapolis.
bringmethenews.com/tag/minneapo...
Cult-favorite art collective #Belarus Free #Theatre will stage a landmark exhibition about the effects of authoritarianism on artistic expression at this year’s 61st Venice #Biennale.
Let's go.
news.artnet.com/art-world/ex...
This is pretty funny ... and accurate. #makeitshitty.
youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ?...
It took a newspaper from another country to get my attention on this and clearly define why we should delete ChatGPT.
The AI platform has been useful for me but its owners are bankrolling MAGA and it plays a significant role as a technology weapon for authoritarianism.
Buh-bye, fascists.
When you put on a song that opens something in you, when you let it do what it is trying to do, when you rise up and move to it or weep to it or laugh out loud at how perfectly it says the thing you could not say.
open.substack.com/pub/randallw...
A person with a voice or an instrument and a feeling can reach through time, find you in your car or in your cups or in your Thursday afternoon, and take hold of you long enough to lift you up.
open.substack.com/pub/randallw...
He's getting back at all those kids of color who intimidated him as a kid, isn't he?
05.03.2026 15:33 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
"In a time of destruction, create something." — Maxine Hong Kingston
Thank you for this quote of the day, @janisian.bsky.social
"Under the second administration of President Donald Trump, there has been a growing fear that museums are self-censoring...The Whitney Biennial, at least, is not obeying in advance."
The arts have power.
“Whitney Biennial 2026,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Mar 8–Aug 23, 2026.
"'It’s a parody of the Creation of Adam,' he said. 'I’ve got a lot of white world leaders who are destroying this planet, and they are put in place of God.'"
And this provocative work has them riled up in New South Wales.
regionriverina.com.au/what-is-hate...
"At a moment when arts and culture, public education, historical memory, and American democracy itself are under coordinated attack, silence is not a neutral posture. It is a decision with consequences."
artsfuse.org/324474/visua...
"After the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, Montclair writer Michael Laser began work on a novel imagining a dystopian United States ruled by authoritarianism.
04.03.2026 23:40 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
"Holcroft’s story, about theater artists working in a country where art is censored by the government, feels not like a static Gordian knot but something slippery and alive."
www.seattletimes.com/entertainmen...
"America first" my ass.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...
"Public space is where citizenship becomes visible, where disagreement acquires form, and where power encounters scrutiny.
"The transformation of public space over the past century has therefore reshaped not only how democracies function, but how they are experienced by ordinary people."
"In this photo collection, Leyad Zavriyev explores street art and graffiti from neighborhoods across the world – from Buenos Aires and San Juan, to Marrakech and Brooklyn."
brownpoliticalreview.org/spray-painti...
Read all of "This Is a Banana," follow, or subscribe (it's free) to my Substack at randallwhite.substack.com I write about how creativity shapes democracy and public life.
For insights about misinformation currently being spread by US military leaders in Iran, see: www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org
Arkansas, North Carolina and my own state of #Texas have political primary #elections today. Let's vote our way out of this trainwreck.
03.03.2026 14:27 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
REPLY REQUESTED. Please name one song or musical composition -- in any genre -- that brings you joy. I'm writing a piece for randallwhite.substack.com about the power of music to lift us up ... especially when it feels like the world wants to drag us down. THANK YOU!
02.03.2026 21:02 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I can't with these boys...
02.03.2026 20:43 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0He has a girlfriend?
02.03.2026 20:42 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Artists of all disciplines, I hope you will read my latest Substack. “This Is a Banana: How creative people become essential witnesses when the lie is the point” open.substack.com/pub/randallw...
02.03.2026 17:09 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
