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How to Solve the Art World’s Courage Problem

We constantly hear about galleries closing, retrenchment and an industry model broken beyond repair; what if the secret of survival lies in bravely recentering art as the language of a human experience that unites us all?

It’s not always those among us who survive and thrive in brutal environments who are the best of us. If anything, they almost never are. In such a world, it is almost always those with the courage to feel—those who open their hearts—who are punished for it and perish. A lesson for anyone who ever dares to do the same. And so we harden. We go cold. We fear saying anything the crowd might object to. We fear them, we fear our neighbors, we fear everywhere. How can a world function when everyone in it is constantly afraid? It can’t. And while some among us—the courageous ones—die as Hilde Lynn Helphenstein did, overnight, tragically, instantly, the rest of us do so quietly, cowardly and slowly.

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I’ve seen too much of this in the art world to stay silent. Courage deserves to be named. Few women ever break through in this world—and when they do, they are treated barbarically. No wonder most prefer to fade into the wallpaper rather than be seen. Women, the industry........

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