Piotr Bernatowicz is the new director of a leading Warsaw art museum, the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art. For three decades it has exhibited Poland’s leading experimental artists and hosted work by “international stars,” according to this article (Alex Marshall, “A Polish Museum Turns to the Right, and Artists Turn Away,” NYTimes, 1-8-2020).
Mr. Bernatowicz says artists who do not “make work about fighting climate change and fascism, or promoting gay rights” are marginalized. He wishes to “promote artists who have other views: conservative, patriotic, pro-family.”
His plans are making the museum into another battleground in Polish culture wars that “pit liberals against the governing populist Law and Justice Party, as well as other conservative groups,” according to the article.
… Some art world figures said it will be difficult to find enough right-wing works to show. “I don’t know what a conservative artist is,” Malgorzata Ludwisiak, the Ujazdowski’s previous director, said. “If it means painting like in the 19th century — a lady on a horse — well, it’s not contemporary art.”
Mr. Bernatowicz says, “I hope within the next seven years, the situation will change.” (He has been appointed for a term of seven years — “far longer than normal.”)
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative 
Hugs, Not Slugs. Now Bugs!
Hugging is the perfect symbol for Mr. López Obrador’s tropical populism. It portrays him as a warm man of the pueblo in contrast with the cold technocrats of what he calls “the mafia of power.” His slogan for trying to end the country’s drug war is “abrazos, no balazos,” or “hugs, not bullets.”
(Ioan Grillo, “Mexico, the Coronavirus and the Hugging President,” NYTimes, 3-23-20)
AMLO can’t catch a break. As he tries to smother narco-trafficking and femicide with hugs, a looming war on bugs — the coronavirus — now rears its head. Adding insult to irony, a gaggle of well-heeled Mexican skiers have trooped home from Vail infected with it.
On a positive note, a government social-distancing campaign has created a superhero icon named Susana Distancia, whose name is a play on “su sana distancia,” or “your healthy distance.” Ioan Grillo points out that Mexico has liabilities, but also assets, in the fight against the coronavirus.
Family networks are strong, making it easier to close schools. During recent natural disasters, I have witnessed great social solidarity… If cases of coronavirus infection do shoot up, as is likely, this solidarity could translate to help the distribution of food and support for affected families.
(c) 2020 JMN