Isaac Butler

Why are you worrying about this?

Like, there's nothing you can do about it.

Please take care of yourself.

And he just wouldn't do that because he wanted to fight back.

For the rest of the arts field, I think it unquestionably had a chilling effect.

Congress passes a bunch of rules.

Basically, the main one is called the decency clause to try to hem in what the NEA will fund.

And once that happens, Gilbert, if you were the curator of the Cruise Museum, you know, and you can— I sure am.

Yep, and you can only apply to the NEA for one grant, you know, a year, you're going to apply for the least offensive show you're doing.

So that gives those things an edge in the marketplace of ideas.

And so you really, really see, many people would say to journalists even at the time, like, I'm not going to program this stuff right now.

So the chilling effect on the field was real.

I don't know who I would be without the arts being the core of who I am.

It happened so early.

You know, I loved art of all kinds from such an early age.

You know, I saw my first...

Philip Glass opera in fourth grade.

That's high art.

But then there's also TV and movies.

You know, like I remember seeing Fantasia at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.