October 30, 2023

Monday, October 30,2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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Joe is always busy.

An Op-Ed by David French.

Joe Biden Knows What It Actually Means to Be President.

There’s a gathering sense that President Biden’s response to the war in Gaza may cost him the 2024 election. A recent Gallup poll showed that his support among Democrats has slipped 11 points in the past month to 75 percent, the lowest of his presidency. On Friday my colleagues in the newsroom reported on a growing backlash against Biden coming from young and left-leaning voters.

Does this mean that standing with Israel could be politically fatal for Biden? I don’t think so, and to understand why, it’s important to understand the core responsibilities of an American president.

In 2012, when I was a partisan supporter of Mitt Romney, there was one message from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that I thought made the most succinct and persuasive case for his second term. It was delivered most memorably by then-Vice President Biden, of all people, at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. He said that Obama had “courage in his soul, compassion in his heart and a spine of steel,” and then Biden delivered the key line: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

While I believed that Romney would do a better job as president than Obama, that sentence affected me so much — not just because it happened to be true but also because it resonated with two of a president’s most vital tasks: preserving prosperity at home and security abroad. A war-weary nation longed for a clear win, and a people still recovering from the Great Recession needed economic stability. The killing of bin Laden was the greatest victory of the war on terrorism, and the preservation of General Motors, an iconic American company, resonated as a national symbol as important as or more important than the number of jobs saved.

Now fast-forward to August 2024, when Biden will speak on his own behalf in Chicago at the next Democratic convention. Will he be able to tell the American people that he did his job? Will he be able to make that claim in the face of international crises more consequential than anything either Obama or Donald Trump faced during their presidencies?

Consider what he confronts: a brutal Russian assault on a liberal democracy in Europe, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and an aggressive China that is gaining military strength and threatens Taiwan. That’s two hot wars and a new cold war, each against a nation or entity that forsakes any meaningful moral norms, violates international law and commits crimes against humanity.

In each conflict abroad — hot or cold — America is indispensable to the defense of democracy and basic humanity. Ukraine cannot withstand a yearslong Russian onslaught unless the United States acts as the arsenal of democracy, keeping the Ukrainian military supplied with the weapons and munitions it needs. America is Israel’s indispensable ally and close military partner. It depends on our aid and — just as important — our good will for much of its strength and security. And Taiwan is a target of opportunity for China absent the might of the United States Pacific Fleet.

And keep in mind, Biden is managing these conflicts all while trying to make sure that the nation emerges from a pandemic with inflation in retreat and its economy intact. In spite of economic growth and low unemployment numbers that make the American economy the envy of the world, Americans are still dealing with the consequences of inflation and certainly don’t feel optimistic about our economic future.

Biden is now under fire from two sides, making these challenges even more difficult. The populist, Trumpist right threatens his ability to fund Ukraine, hoping to engineer a cutoff in aid that could well lead to the greatest victory for European autocrats since Hitler and then Stalin swallowed European democracies whole in their quest for power and control.

At the same time, progressives calling for a cease-fire in Gaza threaten to hand Hamas the greatest victory of its existence. If Hamas can wound Israel so deeply and yet live to fight again, it will have accomplished what ISIS could not — commit acts of the most brutal terror and then survive as an intact organization against a military that possesses the power to crush it outright. I agree with Dennis Ross, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East: Any outcome that leaves Hamas in control in Gaza “will doom not just Gaza but also much of the rest of the Middle East.”

And hovering, just outside the frame, is China, watching carefully and measuring our will.

I understand both the good-faith right-wing objections to Ukraine aid and the good-faith progressive calls for a cease-fire in Israel. Ukraine needs an extraordinary amount of American support for a war that has no end in sight. It’s much easier to rally the West when Ukraine is on the advance. It’s much harder to sustain American support in the face of grinding trench warfare, the kind of warfare that consumes men and material at a terrifying pace.

I also understand that it is hard to watch a large-scale bombing campaign in Gaza that kills civilians, no matter the precision of each individual strike. Much like ISIS in Mosul, Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population. It is impossible to defeat Hamas without harming civilians, and each new civilian death is a profound tragedy, one that unfolds in front of a watching world. It’s a testament to our shared humanity that one of our first instincts when we see such violence is to say, “Please, just stop.”

This instinct is magnified when the combination of the fog of war and Hamas disinformation can cause exaggerated or even outright false claims of Israeli atrocities to race across the nation and the world before the full truth is known. The sheer scale of the Israeli response is difficult to grasp, and there is no way for decent people to see the death and destruction and not feel anguish for the plight of the innocent.

The combination of tragedy, confusion and cost is what makes leadership so difficult. A good leader can’t overreact to any given news cycle. He or she can’t overreact to any specific report from the battlefield. And a good leader certainly can’t overreact to a negative poll.

I’ve long thought that politicians’ moment-by-moment reaction to activists, to members of the media and to polls is partly responsible for the decline in trust in American politicians. What can feel responsive in the moment is evidence of instability in the aggregate. The desperate desire to win each and every news cycle leads to short-term thinking. Politicians put out fires they see on social media, or they change course in response to anger coming from activists. Activists and critics in the media see an outrage and demand an immediate response, but what the body politic really needs is a thoughtful, deliberate strategy and the resolve to see it through.

No administration is perfect. Americans should object, for example, to the slow pace of approving each new weapons system for Ukraine. But in each key theater, Biden’s policies are fundamentally sound. We should support Ukraine as long as it’s necessary to preserve Ukrainian independence from Russian assault. We should stand by Israel as it responds to mass murder, including by supporting a lawful offensive into the heart of Gaza. And we should continue to strengthen alliancesin the Pacific to enhance our allies’ military capabilities and share the burden of collective defense.

And we should do these things while articulating a moral vision that sustains our actions. On Thursday, John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communication, did just that. First, in an interview on “Morning Joe,” he described the efforts to aid Gazan civilians — a humanitarian and legal imperative. He made it clear that the United States is working to preserve civilian life, as it should.

Later on Thursday, he also provided a wider moral context. Asked at a news conference about Biden’s observation that innocents will continue to die as Israel presses its attacks, Kirby responded with facts we cannot forget: “What’s harsh is the way Hamas is using people as human shields. What’s harsh is taking a couple of hundred hostages and leaving families anxious, waiting and worrying to figure out where their loved ones are. What’s harsh is dropping in on a music festival and slaughtering a bunch of young people just trying to enjoy an afternoon.”

By word and deed, the Biden administration is getting the moral equation correct. There should be greater pressure on Hamas to release hostages and relinquish control of Gaza than there should be pressure on Israel to stop its offensive. Hamas had no legal or moral right to launch its deliberate attack on Israeli civilians. It has no legal or moral right to embed itself in the civilian population to hide from Israeli attacks. Israel, by contrast, has every right to destroy Hamas in a manner consistent with the laws of war.

If Biden can persevere in the face of the chaos and confusion of war abroad and polarization at home, all while preserving a level of economic growth that is astonishing in contrast with the rest of the world, he’ll have his own story to tell in Chicago, one that should trump the adversity of any given moment or the concern generated by any given poll.

If Biden can do his job, then he can take the stage in Chicago with his own simple pitch for re-election: In the face of disease, war, inflation and division, the economy thrives — and democracy is alive. (New York Times).

Bidenomics.

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Kamala is always busy. Jill too.

The 60 Minute Interview with the Vice President. 13 minutes.

Vice President Kamala Harris: The 2023 60 Minutes Interview - CBS News

Vice President Kamala Harris answers questions on Israel, the state of the war in Ukraine, gun violence, the 2024 election and more during a wide-ranging conversation with Bill Whitaker.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson Tells GOP Jewish Confab: 'God Is Not Done With Israel.’

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks at an annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday in Las Vegas.

The newly-elected evangelical Christian public speaker promises unwavering support to Israel amid the war with Hamas, saying 'There will be a ceasefire when Hamas ceases to be a threat to Israel.’

LAS VEGAS - House Speaker Mike Johnson, making his first public appearance since becoming speaker at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, told the annual confab that "God is not done with Israel."

Johnson is an evangelical Christian whose connections to Israel reflect the movement's deep ties to the Israeli right, which has become increasingly mainstream over the years. His rise to power is the biggest political victory for the evangelical movement to date, and his address to the RJC reflected that accordingly.

"Our members are inspired right now. People feel the sense that we have a new beginning. I believe that God has given us that opportunity. God is not done with America and God is not done with Israel," he told the 1,000-plus attendees.

“We are going to stand like a rock with our friend and ally, Israel. I promise you that," he said. "We are resolved on behalf of Israel and when I say that, we share your outrage."

"My first visit was to come and be with you, that's not an accident," added Johnson, who detailed what the Republican Party's approach to Israel and antisemitism will be under his watch.

"The world's oldest hatred has become mainstream, thanks to academia and the mainstream media, and fringe government figures. But we must not only call out these antisemitic attacks. We must act," he said.

Johnson noted that his first act of legislation was promoting the pro-Israel resolution that passed with more than 400 votes, though several progressives voted no or abstained due to its failure to recognize Palestinian victims.

"There were 16 members of Congress that did not vote for the resolution. Rashida Tlaib, AOC, Ilhan Omar and others. Their votes underscore an alarming trend of antisemitism, globally and shamefully here in the United States," he said.

"House Republicans will work swiftly to pass legislation to provide Israel much needed resources in their fight against these barbarians. We will stand with Israel," he said, noting America was "founded on our Judeo-Christian heritage."

Johnson further delivered a message to the United Nations, insisting: "There will be a ceasefire when Hamas ceases to be a threat to Israel." The message comes after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, to the consternation of the U.S. and Israel and few other countries.

He also discussed his February 2020 visit to Israel, organized by a leading settler, during which he visited the Temple Mount and met with the conservative think tank behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul.

Netanyahu and his allies – including former Israel ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer – have publicly and privately stressed the importance of evangelical support as U.S. Jews have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s rightward shift.

Johnson called Netanyahu in his first talk with a foreign leader, during which he echoed the premier's comments that Israel's war is one of good vs. evil and light vs. darkness.

"I assured the prime minister of our own unwavering support of Israel and the people in our Congress and under my leadership, we will be there until the end, we will be there until the end of this conflict."

Johnson glowingly quoted British philosopher GK Chesterton for his praise of America's founding and its Declaration of Independence.

Johnson, however, did not note Chesterton has been long been accused of antisemitism, including advocating for Jews to wear distinctive clothing if they hold public office, contesting Alfred Dreyfus' innocence, defending Edward I's expulsion of Jews in England in 1290.

"GK Chesterton was the famous British politician and philosopher and statesman. He famously said one time he observed that America was the only nation in the world that was founded upon creed and he listed, with almost theological lucidity, the Declaration of Independence," he said.

"What was the creed? It is the second paragraph, the famous second paragraph that we don't make schoolchildren memorize anymore, but they should: we hold these truths to be self evident," Johnson added. (Haaretz, the English speaking newspaper in Israel).

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Trump family testimony dates for fraud trial in New York City.

November 1 — Don Jr.

November 2 — Eric Trump 

November 3 — Ivanka Trump

November 6 — Donald Trump

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American Universities under pressure.

Harvard.

As Harvard president, I am committed to tackling the pernicious antisemitism on our campus.

by Claudine Gay.

This essay was adapted from a speech given Friday night at Harvard Hillel.

I’m told that in this week’s Torah portion, God tells Abraham that Abraham will “be a blessing.” Not that Abraham will receive a blessing, but that he will be one  in the lives of others. That he will take an active role in bringing light into a world that is so often full of darkness. 

That responsibility to be a blessing – to bring light, to each other and to the world—resonates with me, and with my hopes for Harvard. 

The past few weeks have been full of darkness. First came the horrific terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, in which over 1,400 Jewish people were murdered by Hamas, and more than 200 others were taken hostage. Then came the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Here in the U.S., we are witnessing a surge in anti-Jewish incidents and rhetoric across the nation — and on our own campus. The ancient specter of antisemitism, that persistent and corrosive hatred, has returned with renewed force.

A recent ADL report found that incidents of antisemitism had almost tripled over the past six years nationally. Here at Harvard, I’ve heard story after story of Jewish students feeling increasingly uneasy or even threatened on campus.

As we grapple with this resurgence of bigotry, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: Antisemitism has no place at Harvard.

For years, this university has done too little to confront its continuing presence. No longer.

I am committed to tackling this pernicious hatred with the urgency it demands.

Harvard’s mission, and legacy, is the pursuit and dissemination of truth. And the core of antisemitism is a lie This lie has taken many forms, including Holocaust denial, blood libels, conspiracy theories and the denial of the Jewish peoples’ historical ties to the land of Israel.

Harvard is a place for inquiry and vigorous debate about our world’s greatest challenges. A place to reveal truth, not to deny facts.

To begin the vital work of eradicating antisemitism from our community, I have assembled a group of advisers whose wisdom, experience, and counsel will help guide us forward. These trusted voices include Jewish members of the faculty, alumni, and religious leaders.

In the coming weeks, I will work with these advisers and Harvard administrators to frame an agenda and strategy for combating antisemitism on campus. They will help us to think expansively and concretely about all the ways that antisemitism shows in our campus culture. They will help us to identify all the places where we can intervene to disrupt and dismantle this ideology, and where we can educate our community to recognize and confront antisemitism.

They will help us find opportunities to foster the empathy, literacy, and understanding across identities and beliefs that we need to be the Harvard the world is calling for and that our community deserves.

Our Jewish students have shared searing accounts of feeling isolated and targeted. This shakes me to my core – as an educator, as a mother, as a human being. Harvard must be a place where everyone feels safe and seen. It is the right thing to do.

The amount of work before us may seem daunting. And I know the goal that I have set for this institution will not be achieved tomorrow. Any problem that has been allowed to fester for this long will defy easy remedy.

Where we go from here will require courage, humility, and perseverance. It will demand fearless self-reflection about our own assumptions and biases. But we have done this before.

We have confronted legacies of injustice in the past and emerged stronger. Guided by our shared values, and our love for Harvard, I have faith we can turn pain into durable, hard-won progress.

By lifting each other up and speaking truth even when difficult, the light of justice will scatter the shadows of hate and antisemitism.

I ask for your partnership in this effort. There is so much important work to be done, but I have never been more hopeful that Harvard can lead the way. I am confident that we can rise to the challenge once given to Abraham, to become the blessing needed for our shared future.

Claudine Gay, a political scientist, became the first Black president of Harvard University in July 2023. (The Forward).

Cornell.

One more thing.

Anti-Jewish violence elsewhere too.

Touch 👇to watch a mob in Dagestan, Russia search for Jews.

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Remember the Robert E. Lee Statue in Charlottesville?

Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace.

Melted down in secret, the divisive Confederate monument will be turned into a new piece of public art.

SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too.

So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly Unite the Right rallyin 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.

Six years ago, groups with ties to the Confederacy had sued to stop the monument from being taken down. Torch-bearing white nationalists descended on the Virginia college town to protest its removal, and one man drove his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others.

The statue’s defenders more recently sought to block the city from handing Lee over to Charlottesville’s Black history museum, which proposed a plan to repurpose the metal. In a lawsuit, those plaintiffs suggested the century-old monument should remain intact or be turned into Civil War-style cannons.

But on Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry outside Virginia, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence.

The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville was the focal point of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017.

“Well, they can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” said Andrea Douglas, the museum’s executive director, as she watched pieces of oxidized metal descend into the furnace. “There will be no tape for that.”

“No cannons,” added Jalane Schmidt, a University of Virginia religious studies professor standing beside her.

Swords Into Plowshares, a project led by the two women, will turn bronze ingots made from molten Lee into a new piece of public artwork to be displayed in Charlottesville. They made arrangements for Lee to be melted down while they started collecting ideas from city residents for that new sculpture.

Given past threats to the project and worries about legal action, Douglas, Schmidt and other organizers who traveled to this foundry in the American South took great pains to keep this part of the process under wraps. Only a few dozen people, including some who had housed or transported the dismembered figure of Lee, were invited to watch alongside them in secret. They announced the feat at a news conference Thursday afternoon in Charlottesville.

As dozens of Confederate monuments have been toppled around the country, most others have been left to sit in storage or put up on Civil War battlefields that venerate the Lost Cause. A few have been exhibited in museums, where historians can add necessary context. But this might be the first Confederate monument to be melted, and each person witnessing the scene on Saturday had a different view of what it meant.

Some said the statue was being destroyed. Others called it a restoration. Depending on whom you asked, the bronze was being reclaimed, disrupted, or redeemed to a higher purpose. It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one.

Schmidt, who directs the Memory Project at U-Va.’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, said she felt like she was preparing for an execution of sorts — “like if there’s a rabid dog in the neighborhood that’s been hurting people, and it needs to be euthanized,” she said.

Still, that dark feeling was better than carting Charlottesville’s “white supremacist toxic waste” away to some other community. The statue would still be taking up space. Someone would still be paying for it to stand there.

“We are taking the moral risk associated with melting it down,” she added, “in the hope of creating something new.”

After the city took the statue down in July 2021, officials left it in a bus depot until voting to hand it over to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. In the two years since, the museum was forced to relocate Lee “on more than one occasion” because of safety concerns, Douglas said.

That happened under sometimes-urgent deadlines, amid security concerns and the logistical challenges of handling about 6,000 pounds of bronze. The metal requires a forklift to be moved even just a few yards, much less out of Virginia.

After the museum received the statue from the city but before it reached the foundry, Lee was cut down into nine pieces — although museum leaders declined to say where or when. The general’s head was removed from his body and his horse, Traveller, but it needed to be broken down further to fit into the small furnace here.

After the city took the statue down in July 2021, officials left it in a bus depot until voting to hand it over to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. In the two years since, the museum was forced to relocate Lee “on more than one occasion” because of safety concerns, Douglas said.

That happened under sometimes-urgent deadlines, amid security concerns and the logistical challenges of handling about 6,000 pounds of bronze. The metal requires a forklift to be moved even just a few yards, much less out of Virginia.

After the museum received the statue from the city but before it reached the foundry, Lee was cut down into nine pieces — although museum leaders declined to say where or when. The general’s head was removed from his body and his horse, Traveller, but it needed to be broken down further to fit into the small furnace here.

With a flash of bluish-white light and orange sparks, a trio of foundry workers carved seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head.

“It’s a better sculpture right now than it’s ever been,” said one of the metal-casters, who along with other foundry workers spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about potential retaliation. “We’re taking away what it meant for some people and transforming it.”

All of this could have happened as early as January 2022. But once the lawsuit was filed to block the meltdown, the museum waited until a judge agreed to dismiss the case. A 30-day window for plaintiffs to appeal that decision expired Thursday afternoon.

The general’s head was hollow, save for a few traces of wax mold and some dirt and rust buildup inside. “I hope it doesn’t convey a message of hate on hate. It’s not that,” one of the foundrymen said. Below his face shield, he wore a black “Don’t Tread on Me” cap.

The foundry workers put the statue fragments into a metal cage, covered them in a blanket and then used a forklift to move them from the indoor workshop to the yard outside, where the small crowd started filling in to watch the action.

Douglas paid tribute to the nearly 15,000 enslaved people who lived in Charlottesville at the start of the Civil War and made up a majority of the town’s population. Schmidt spoke about the “moral risk” of keeping Confederate statues intact.

The Rev. Isaac Collins, a United Methodist minister who at one point helped transport the broken-apart statue, followed with a sermon over the jet-engine whir of the furnace. He and Schmidt had organized Bible studies suggesting that celebrating the Lost Cause through public statues was a sin, and he made a similar case as he cited Bible verses and told of Charlottesville’s history of cross-burnings and Jim Crow.

“There’s a different story about the South to be told, and to do that, we have to get rid of all these myths,” he told the group.

A tank of propane gas mixed with forced air from a blower to reach a scalding 2,250 degrees Fahrenheit in the furnace. Working in batches, the foundry workers put fragments of the Lee statue on top of the equipment to preheat them and remove any moisture.

One of them compared the process of melting bronze to cooking: Any water can cause a small explosion, and you don’t want hot metal bursting out of the machine. But the preheating was not a bad excuse to add some dramatic flair, as they set up the glow of the fire to reflect off the inside of Lee’s cracked, severed face.

In the five-year debate over whether it could be toppled, the monument had been “patrolled” by armed vigilante groups and vandalized with paint and graffiti by protesters. Residents fought over whether it should be shrouded in black cloth, and politicians on the campaign trail cited the statue as a symbol of either heritage or hatred.

In some ways, organizers said, that history only made this haunted spectacle feel more real. “Oh, my gosh. It’s like a Halloween movie back here,” Schmidt said as she walked around to view the face from the back. “That is creepy.”

Finding a foundry to take on a project like this one was hardly an easy task. Plenty of people said no. But the owner of this foundry, a Black man, said he didn’t feel like he had a choice.

“The risk is being targeted by people of hate, having my business damaged, having threats to family and friends,” he said. Yet, “when you are approached with such an honor, especially to destroy hate, you have to do it.”

To him, melting the statue down meant the trauma will be gone when Black people pass squares where Confederate statues once stood. “It is time to dismantle this hate, this infection that has plagued our beautiful country,” he said. “It is time to rid these icons of hate.”

Hours later into the night, he and another metal-caster used a set of lifting tongs to pick up the crucible, a ceramic container that holds the bronze inside the furnace. They used a new one to avoid contaminating the metal with other materials. The crowd gathered to watch, oohing and aahing at the glowing barrel as it was lifted up.

If you took away the off-duty police officers brought on to guard the property, or the plastic tarp hiding it all from the street, it all started to feel something like a backyard bonfire.

There were toddlers eating pizza, parents in “Swords Into Plowshares” shirts sitting on lawn chairs, and old friends sipping from paper cups filled with champagne and bourbon. Some were reuniting after previously helping with the project, and many brought their families along to witness this small moment in history.

All of them, though, had been instructed to disable the location on their phones. Charlottesville activists have faced online attacks and had tiki torches planted in their front yards, and the organizers didn’t want a repeat incident here.

The foundry workers poured the crucible into custom-made iron molds, which are meant to leave the Swords Into Plowshares logo etched onto the ingots.

The furnace was hot enough that it should have easily turned the bronze into liquid. But the molten metal got thick and clumpy unusually fast, and the workers wondered whether there was something else — maybe some tin or lead? — corrupting the century-old material.

The metal had been cast while Charlottesville and the South were ruled by segregation and dedicated days after the Ku Klux Klan marched through town. Philanthropist Paul G. McIntire, whose prosperous enslaver father had been financially crippled by the Civil War, commissioned and donated the monument to the city.

“This metal has a lot of bad juju stuck in it,” the foundry owner said, studying the lumpy bronze. “It’s cursed.”

After the molds cooled, the foundry workers flipped them onto a pool of sand and banged on them so the ingots would fall out. They were streaked in different shades of brown, some of the engravings a little hard to see.

To Schmidt, it did not seem to particularly matter. The ingots were something to work with — something that took up a different kind of space in the world — and could allow them to imagine what form the metal might take on next.

This was merely the “end of the middle.” They had already faced lawsuits and protests, fought neo-Nazis and monument defenders, fended off attacks and worked in secret to get the bronze to this state. Now came the very public process of taking something ugly and making something beautiful: picking an artist, meeting with residents and imagining what might happen next.

“This is a relief,” she sighed. “This feels good to have material created. … It’s got to go forward.” (The Washington Post).

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Hillary went to an Adele concert.

Touch.👇

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Basquiat and Warhol are together again on the Lower Eastside.

A look inside the mesmerizing new ‘Basquiat x Warhol’ exhibit.

The two iconic artists collaborated on over 150 works.

There are plenty of galleries and museums in New York, all incredibly versatile and beautiful in their own right, but there's something about the Brant Foundation at 421 East 6th Street in the East Village that tugs at all the senses— especially when displaying works by the same artists that have called the neighborhood home for years throughout history.

Case in point: the latest exhibit to be mounted in the space, "Basquiat x Warhol," a traveling show from Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France, that focuses on the unique collaboration between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, two figures that have all but defined the city's downtown art scene in the 1980s.

Officially open on November 1 through January 7, 2024, tickets for the first set of dates of the "Basquiat x Warhol" exhibition are now on sale right here.

Here are a few things to keep in mind on your visit:

You'll Get to See Some Iconic Works

From "Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper)" to "Felix the Cat," the new show highlights a wide variety of works that the two artists have collaborated on throughout their respective careers, each one tackling themes like colonialism, police brutality, gentrification and a vast variety of other sociopolitical issues that we are still contending with today.

Interestingly enough, some of the paintings that Warhol and Basquiat had produced together back in the '80s were shown to the public at Tony Shafrazi's New York gallery in 1985.

At the time, the exhibit was not received well by the media, actually convincing the creatives to put an end to their collaboration. This new exhibition seeks to confirm the strength of their relationship and their artistic output, celebrating their long-spanning careers as a duo and as single entities as well.

Warhol and Basquiat's Relationship Was a Fruitful One

The two artists first met in 1982, when gallerist Bruno Bischofberger invited Basquiat to Warhol's famous Factory.

The two took a photo together and, a mere couple of hours later, Basquiat produced a double portrait that's currently part of the new exhibit. 

In 1984, the artists' collaboration officially kicked off, one that yielded close to 160 canvases. 

"Meeting almost every day, the pair would work on multiple monumental canvases at once, from early hours into the evening," reads a press release. "This enthusiastic exchange of energy is exemplified in their paintings, which illustrate a back and forth between that is both tense and complimentary."

As explained by the artists themselves back in the day, one of them would start a canvas and include his very unique iconography on it. The other would then spend some time with it, marking it with his own recognizable style. 

1984

"Warhol’s screen-printed advertisements and cultural symbols are effaced by Basquiat’s iconic figures and signs," reads the release. "Newspaper headlines included by Warhol are obscured and rewritten by Basquiat; scenes painted in Basquiat’s conceptual Neo-Expressionist style are joined by Warhol’s precise appropriations of brand logos."  

The Gallery Itself is Worth Learning More About

The Brant Foundation is a private art collection and gallery that boasts two exhibition spaces, the one in the East Village and another one in Greenwich, Connecticut. Art collector Peter Brant owns the collections, although the latter isn't open to the public 

The Greenwich location opened back in 2009. The Manhattan museum debuted about a decade later, in 2019, in a stunning building that used to be a Consolidated Edison substation.

Artist Walter Der Maria actually bought the space to use as his studio after it was no longer a ConEd property. Brant purchased it after De Maria's passing in 2013, funding a major renovation that has turned the building into the perfect venue for relatievly small exhibitions with a modern bend.  

Anna Rahmanan (Timeout).

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In New York City. Early Voting Until November 5th.

Election Day, November 7.