In 2020, four major museums were set to showcase the first retrospective of painter Philip Guston’s work in over 15 years. Spanning five decades, the Canadian American’s work responded to injustices in an ever-evolving style of painting. His art includes a series of paintings made during the ’60s that feature a cartoonish hooded Ku Klux Klansmen as a commentary on the social upheaval Guston saw happening around him. This motif made museums nervous, and they decided to take time to contextualize “the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work,” ultimately delaying the retrospective until 2022.

Artists, curators, and critics said in an open letter that the decision was made because the museums “fear[ed] controversy” and “lack[ed] faith in the intelligence of their audience.” To author and cultural historian Isaac Butler, the decision to postpone was particularly absurd because Guston was a lifelong anti-racist. But more broadly, according to Butler, art isn’t something people need to be protected from; in fact, sometimes it should provoke us.

As he mulled over this art world controversy, he watched the “Don’t Say Gay” bill become law, people lose their jobs over support for DEI, and right-wing figures use free expression to undermine the rights of those who disagreed with them.

His rumination and research culminated in The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America’s Culture Wars. Released in June, the book borrows its name from Robert Mapplethorpe’s posthumous 1989 retrospective, decried by conservatives who claimed a gallery set to display his work was using its National Endowment for the Arts grant to endorse explicit photography. This controversy and the subsequent introduction of an amendment restricting what the NEA could fund marked the official beginning of the war between American art and the “New Right” brewing since the 1970s.

The Perfect Moment maps the history of the NEA, the largest arts funder in the US, and archconservatives like Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan, who used provocative pieces of art to stir the right’s base into a moral panic. Structured like both a two-act play and nonviolent military history, Butler builds a case for how the battle over American contemporary art laid the groundwork for our present moment.

This history feels particularly urgent now. Since 2025, artists, institutions, and organizations have been questioning how they will survive after $27 million in NEA grants were canceled due to the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts. In the aftermath, several NEA staffers resigned, numerous creative projects halted, and artists like Amy Sherald and Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez reported museums’ efforts to censor them. The Trump administration’s proposed 2027 budget would permanently wind down operations of the NEA, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute of Museum and Library Services.

During my conversation with Butler, we discussed the fight for the arts, where the NEA currently stands, the power of provocateurs, and private funding’s growing influence in art. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You once said that this story is one “I thought I knew and understood, but I discovered again and again that I didn’t know the half of it.” I was wondering if you could expand a bit on some of those........

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