Another triumphant year.  Another year of hard work and visionary commitment to advancing Creativity for the Greater Good.

What does it mean to share an “end of year” newsletter while in the midst of so many transformations, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and new beginnings?  

The arts, design, humanities, and all centers of culture ensure the vibrancy of our region and our country.

How do the arts contribute to our sense of place?  How does our sense of place evolve as neighbors, as city inhabitants, and as citizens in a fast-changing world?  Versions of these questions have been on the minds of many of us who care both about the arts and about the future of our public sphere.

I had heard through the grapevine that MoMA was going to be presenting new choreographic installations by Adam Linder.  Linder had visited the Bay Area a year earlier as an artist-in-residence at the Wattis, and I wondered if I would have a chance to see his offering in the MoMA galleries.  When Stuart Comer--

Two outlying cities facing major metropolitan development and common prejudices,
Two historical places of innovative artistic communities,

How poignant to be writing my last End of Year Newsletter as Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts + Design, a missive that also doubles as an “End of Term” reflection. It is moving for me to be concluding this role just as our world is opening up to life post-vaccine.

Perhaps all of us have heard too many times that this was “a year like no other.” It was indeed a “surreal” year and a year to which many are happily bidding good riddance.  Of course, it was also a year that propelled a good deal of reflection about what it means to be healthy, what it means to be just, and w