Critics Jason Farago, Maya Chung, and Anne Midgette in Conversation with Helga Davis

About the Video

At the beginning of January 2021, Jason Farago, critic at large for The New York Times wrote an influential article titled “The Arts Are in Crisis. Here’s How Biden Can Help.” In the widely circulated op-ed, he described the state and effects of a cultural depression exacerbated by the pandemic, considering its social, economic, and political ramifications. He joins Unmasking the Arts host Helga Davis and fellow arts thinkers, associate editor Maya Chung of The New York Review of Books and former Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette to discuss these ideas further in a wonderfully extensive and inspiring conversation that considers the arts within the context of all of these societal impacts.

“Art, music, drama—here is a point worth recalling in a pandemic—are instruments of psychic and social health.”

—Critic Jason Farago