Not always those of us who survive and thrive in harsh environments are the best of us. If they are, they probably never are. In such a world, it is almost always those who dare to feel—those who open their hearts—who are punished for it and perish. A lesson to anyone who dares to do the same. And so we strengthen. We are cold. We are afraid to say anything that the crowd might object to. We fear them, we fear our neighbors, we fear everywhere. How can the world function when everyone in it is always afraid? He won’t. And while some of us—the brave ones—die like Hilde Lynn Helphenstein did, overnight, tragically, suddenly, we all do so quietly, cowardly and slowly.
I have seen too much of this in art to be silent. Courage deserves a name. Few women ever break into this world—and when they do, they are treated cruelly. No wonder many prefer to fade into the background rather than be seen. Women, the industry says quietly, are not enough on their own—they feel compelled to undergo surgery, stay young, stay beautiful. Men do not feel the same pressure. Hilda was even attacked, I read later, by an artist who accused her of betraying the working class. The working class. As if the art world as it exists today has any relationship to the working towns of Kentucky and Pennsylvania or the backcountry of Maine and Texas.
Since when did the arts belong to the working class? I have yet to see a working-class man or woman walk into a SoHo or Chelsea gallery and feel truly welcomed. Art is one of the few things that can help ordinary people endure extraordinary hardships. That it’s not a choice made every day by an industry that talks about accessibility while building high walls.
The art world presents itself as progressive, liberal, enlightened. It is neither of those things—and nothing reveals that more clearly than who holds the pen. At the New York Times, both of the staff visual arts critics are white men. This is the seat of power. It is where artists are allowed or buried, where galleries rise or disappear, where works are created with a single review. And in 2026, in the paper that speaks to this nation every day about race and equality, not one of those seats is held by a woman or a person of color.
I am not a person who works in racial politics. I believe in the best person for the role, nothing else. But in a country of 330 million people—a nation of extraordinary race, culture and gender—to repeatedly arrive at the same place sitting in the same seat during the period of isolation is not a risk. The odds against it are staggering. Which means it’s not a chance. It’s a popular thing. It is kept quiet, protected by the institution and made to wonder that the institution that we do is the loudest voice in the house on the issue of equality. That is not progressivism. That is performance.
Many in the arts—especially artists—imagine an art world that doesn’t exist. I have never been interested in the art world. I cared about the real world. There is only one art of the world, and that is the one we all wake up to. It was never meant to be elite, exclusionary or harsh and judgmental as it has become.
Art is about conveying time, culture and language the human experience that unites us all. That simple nod of understanding between seemingly different people—reminds us of our common humanity. I wish it was more of a working class. To the millions who wake up every day to work, who don’t have the luxury to grapple with life’s great questions, but who can be moved in ways they never expected, if only they were allowed to feel them. Sometimes it’s nothing more than standing in front of a work of art before going to work, only to realize years later that it was that moment that gave them the courage to continue.
If evil exists in this world, kill the human soul by luring the art world with big money. The circle grew smaller, he left outside. We began to deceive certain artists and certain names and we forgot what art is, robbing humanity of one of the last tools that we had to remember that despite everything, commercialism, materialism, decadence, something remained inside us that we once valued. The soul.
Maybe it’s time to stop and think about how lost we’ve gotten—and how lost we’ve gotten. We hear all the time about gallery closings, layoffs, the art world’s irreparably broken model—everyone wants to find the secret to survival. Perhaps the secret is, and has always been, the one thing we had that we lost. The seemingly impossible model starts with galleries that are rooted in the heart of the owner. Because when you have forgotten that you had it, you will spend all your days trying to understand with your mind how to fix something that only the heart can do.
Georges Bergès is the founder and owner of Georges Bergès Gallery. He still believes that art is not a luxury but a necessity in life. The art of life’s journey.
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