Blog / 2025 / The Time Is Now.

Last week, I submitted a proposal to make my new project a collaboration. Instead of me, alone, creating a collection of paintings and stories depicting individuals from American history who are often overlooked for reasons of ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ability, I realized the series should be many visual artists and writers working together to assert a version of American history that includes all of us. To make this happen, I need an institutional partner who can facilitate this sort of group project, so I applied to an organization that I thought might appreciate this work.

I don’t know yet what will come of that proposal, but today I want to talk about two chilling things that happened the day I sent it in.

The first was that the proposal application form had changed. In the two weeks between when I first looked at the site so that I could start composing my answers and the moment I actually submitted the completed form, the institution removed this DEI-centered question:

How does your project advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging?

[Our institution] is deeply committed to expanding access, fostering artistic representation, and creating an environment where all voices are heard and valued. How does your project reflect the rich and varied perspectives of communities?

In other words, the organization deleted explicit DEI language from its application, because it fears being targeted by the current US government.

And with good reason! The day I submitted my proposal, Trump fired Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, or at least he said he fired her—it’s unclear whether or not he actually has the authority to make staffing decisions at any of the Smithsonian Museums.* When he announced the dismissal on social media, Trump called the director “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.”

In 2022, Sajet told The New York Times that, for centuries, portraits were reserved for the elite, leaving a distorted historical record largely limited to “the wealthy, the pale and the male.” This is, of course, a fact that even those who aren’t interested in art history know to be accurate. That Sajet used the voguish phrase “pale and male” doesn’t make the content of her statement less true. Referring to white men as “pale and male” only makes it clear that she’s not on board with continuing a trend which has certainly had its moment, seeing as portraiture’s focus on privileged people is now in its third millennium.**

I don’t know what form my historical portrait project will eventually take, in part because I’m not sure I’ll be able to find a partner organization. That said, I’ve decided to keep exploring, like with this portrait of James Baldwin that’s currently on my easel.

These days, Baldwin is most widely known for something he said in an essay published in The New York Times in 1962:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

It’s a great line, for sure—and one that I’ve talked about before—but it’s far more powerful in context. It comes from the essay “As Much Truth as One Can Bear” and, despite how popular this Baldwin quote is in activist circles, that text is not a treatise on social justice. Instead, it’s an ode to writers and artists of all kinds.

In it, Baldwin describes creative work as telling “as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.”

I’m telling more truth than I can bear when I say that now is the time to stand up.

Trump’s strongman tactics have functionally destroyed our democracy. As I said in this video seven weeks ago when it became clear that Trump had suspended due process, the US government is now a dictatorship. It may not feel like one to you, but, then again, if you’ve lived your whole life in the US and especially if you’re white, you almost certainly have no direct experience of what life under an authoritarian government actually feels like.

The time is now. I’ll be at a No Kings protest on June 14^th and I hope you will be too. Find an event near you on the No Kings site.

I made this protest poster for the Hands Off National Day of Action in April. Since then, it’s become a popular image in print-on-demand shop, and, while I know that’s hardly a scientific metric of the state of things, the frequent sales of this design have made it abundantly clear to me that I’m not alone in sensing that the time is now.