Steven Nelson

Screen shot of Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard page: "The Environment Forum with Michael Lobel: Van Gogh and the End of Nature"

If you're in the Boston/Cambridge area, in three weeks I'll be talking about my Van Gogh book at Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/enviro...

Trump’s Shutdown Backfires, Newsom Torches His University Loyalty Pledge, Johnson Gets Cut Off, and The Regime’s Portland Lies Exposed Great news for truth, terrible news for Trump

Trump’s Imaginary Peace Deal Mocked by World Leaders While Newsom Torches The Regime’s Campus Loyalty Pledge

This exhibition is an extraordinary cavalcade of work from that time that gives a broad view of Black makers and their formal and social concerns. The exhibition design is extraordinary.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 | National Gallery of Art The first exhibition to consider photography’s impact on a cultural and aesthetic movement that celebrated Black history, identity, and beauty.

We ran to National Gallery of Art to see “Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985” before the museum closes due to the government shutdown. If you have time today or tomorrow, go!

www.nga.gov/exhibitions/...

The were joined by a second work.

The Trump-Epstein friendship statue has returned to the National Mall, on 3rd St. by the National Gallery of Art East Building.

Yeah. Hard pass.

Because the mainstream media’s bar is always higher for non-Republicans.

Universities considering capitulating to the Trump “conditions” should use this real world example to understand they will simply be destroying their own institution. bsky.app/profile/nich...

These are the people @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social wants us to talk to. Let that sink in.

Trump, 79, Posts Bizarre Grim Reaper-Themed AI Music Video If the music video is to be believed, Russell Vought is the Grim Reaper.

Someone is going to have to explain to me how this administration isn’t totally weird. www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump...

Forced to Flee Two Homes, a Painter Finds a Refuge on Canvas

My latest for the NYT: the Iraqi-American painter Hayv Kahraman had to flee Baghdad as a child because of American bombs, and had to flee her home in Altadena because of wildfires. The two events come together in her new paintings. I interviewed her about it. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/a...

PASS IT ON.

As president of @aaup.org I stand with Governor Newsom. Every single democratic governor should follow suit

Universities Must Reject Trump Admin "Loyalty Oath" Compacts The AAUP and AFT warn that the Trump administration’s offer to give preferential treatment to colleges and universities in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda is entirely corrupt.

Thank you @aaup.org

www.aaup.org/news/univers...

In 1900, Black librarian Daniel Murray began a bibliography of works by Black Americans, his goal “to secure every book and pamphlet in existence, by a Negro Author”, exhibit them at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and then archive them at @LibraryCongress: publicdomainreview.org/collection/d...

what does an "unconstitutional DEI principle" mean in the context of a tunnel project? what, a black person is going to use it?

In the wake of the Kirk assassination and the volley between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, we should all learn from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets...

Sept. 30, 1919: Elaine Massacre Black farmers were massacred in Elaine, Arkansas for their efforts to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices. A white mob shot at them, and the farmers returned fire in self-defense. Estimates ...

#tdih 1919 #RedSummer Black sharecroppers met in Elaine, Arkansas to organize for fair pay for cotton.

More than 100 of them were massacred by a white mob.

Twelve Black men were sentenced to death for "riots." #Terrorism #TeachOutsideTextbook 🧵
www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/el...

Short description: a working metronome has an old photo of white USians attending the lynching of a Black USian. A figure of a burned Black man with a noose atop US flag beats time back and forth, a front panel of newspaper clippings has headlines showing lynchings More info: In the functioning metronome of “I’ve Got Rhythm,” Saar has placed a skeleton-like spirit on top of the American flag, ticking along. Inside of the musical structure are newspaper clippings; circled in red, it reads: “Negro lynched after refusing to dance on white’s command.” “People would go to church after a Saturday lynching and they could never see the disconnection or connection,” Saar explains. ...the metronome ticks — an ominous beat signaling impending doom.

“People would go to church after a Saturday lynching and they could never see the disconnection or connection.”
- Betye Saar

I've Got Rhythm, 1972
Betye Saar b. 1926

"… assemblage became a language of protest and renewal during a period of social rupture"
- Sixties Surreal

#ArtSky #BlackSky

Tell Congress to side with DC — Free DC

Those of us who live in Washington, DC have no voting members in Congress. Whether you live in DC or not, please consider writing Congress to ask that they oppose bills that restrict our local power and support those that enhance home rule. freedcproject.org/congress?sou...

Pearl of wisdom.

Simone Leigh’s ‘monumental’ Royal Academy show set for 2027 Exhibition by African American artist to focus on architecture, art under fascism and her own links to the UK

I am so excited about Simone Leigh’s upcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Letters from an American Politics Podcast · Updated Daily · Heather Cox Richardson's narrated newsletter about the history behind today's politics. heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

In case you’re wondering what Hegseth’s Wounded Knee medal restoration means and why it’s despicable in every way, this is the clearest explainer you can get, from, of course, @hcrichardson.bsky.social, an expert on this subject.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l...

A man was just arrested outside of the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago. When legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild asked why, an agent threatened to arrest them too.

Victor Ekpuk, “Dancer,” 2025. It’s a 10-foot-tall bright red public sculpture shaped like a person.

Excited to be in conversation with artist Victor Ekpuk about his work. The event will be held Oct. 8 at the Goethe-Institut. It’s free and open to the public.

www.eventbrite.com/e/creating-p...

The Right Wants to Exterminate Trans People. Liberals Are Helping. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative movement has accelerated its war against trans people. And too many centrist Democrats have kept up their trans bashing.

“These days, it seems that not a week goes by without some prominent Democrat bashing trans people—despite the Trump administration’s placing a bigger and bigger target on their backs.” — Jack Mirkinson

www.thenation.com/article/poli...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

This is such a great piece. I feel I benefitted even more by reading it in concert with @roxanegay.bsky.social's recent op-ed on the fantasy of civility, particularly in the "terms and conditions" applying to our living with one another.

Thanks so much.