The new issue of The Washington Spectator, with an introduction to MD/NY from Marfa Dialogues co-founder Hamilton Fish of the Public Concern Foundation, which publishes The Spectator
This special issue of The Washington Spectator coincides with the launch of the Marfa Dialogues/New York project—a citywide public conversation on climate change scheduled for this October and November in New York. More than 30 organizations—leading cultural and academic institutions, arts initiatives and advocacy groups—will present a spectrum of programs that engage climate-related issues over the project’s two-month calendar.
The animating idea behind Marfa Dialogues is to bring artists and people from the creative community together with journalists, academics, scientists, public interest advocates and activists to explore social and political themes. The Public Concern Foundation, the publisher of this bulletin, co-founded this project together with Ballroom Marfa, a leading contemporary arts center in Marfa, Texas, in 2010. Our initial symposium addressed the culture and politics of the border region. Ballroom curated an exhibition of Mexican artists, many of whom looked at the border through the dual lens of identity and memory. We learned from this first undertaking that the inclusion of artists in the mix of authors, academics and other experts on the program helped broaden the public conversation and make the subject more accessible to a wider audience.
Keep reading at www.washingtonspectator.org for more from Fish along with climate change insight from Diana Liverman from Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona in Tuscon and Peter Lehner of NRDC.