Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, pitches leading the $210M NEA to revive classical traditions in public art, rejecting corporate and leftist influences he blames for cultural decline—like The Physical Impossibility of Death (a $6.2M banana sculpture later eaten on stage) or Obama-era programs favoring contemporary works over Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mockingbird. He champions classical architecture (e.g., Monticello, Trump’s 2017 federal design order) and religiously symbolic art like Mario Shodo’s Path of Thorns and Roses, arguing it fosters civic virtue over abstract trends. With endorsements from Congress, donors, and writers, Shubow seeks to redefine the NEA’s mission, prioritizing enduring beauty and skill-based education over what he calls "wealthy money-laundering" in modern painting. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Claiborne with this week's interview with Justin Shubo.
Justin Shubo is the president of the National Civic Art Society, which is a nonprofit organization that promotes the classical tradition in public art and architecture.
But what he wants to be is the head of the National Endowment of the Arts.
And you know, this is something that is very near and dear to my heart.
I've been talking for a long time about the fact that we've been going through a kind of remarkable drought in the arts.
Our music is banal.
Our movies and streaming shows are uninteresting.
Buildings are not, buildings have gotten a little better, actually.
Architecture in some cities has gotten a little better, but novels are uninteresting.
Poetry is dead, dead.
And all of this, I think, is connected to a sort of cultural period of cultural decadence.
We've gone through ideas tapped out, forms of communication sort of taken over by a corporate idea, leftist idea that I think is just poison.
So I want to let Justin make his pitch to be the head of the National Endowments of the Arts.
I'm familiar with his work.
I've read some of his writing.
He's exactly the sort of person I think should be in there.
And I want to hear more about it.
So Justin, thank you for coming on.
It's nice to meet you.
Oh, well, thanks so much for having me.
First, I want to start by saying I wouldn't want to be presumptuous about serving in the administration, but truly it would be an honor to serve.
It's important to understand that the National Endowment for the Arts is the largest funder of arts and arts education in the country.
Its annual budget is around $210 million.
For a long time, Republicans have called for eliminating the agency altogether.
And I think, yes, some of them remember some of the controversies from the 1980s when the NEA supported some really outrageous art.
But the bigger issue is Republicans do not see that the NEA is producing worthy art.
I mean, my vision for the agency comes from Dana Joya, the masterful poet and translator who ran the NEA under George W. Bush.
He said a great nation deserves great art.
And when I think about what is the highest art, I think of art that is beautiful, profound, or moving.
And yet, if you go to a contemporary art gallery today, you know, you're likely to see something like a banana duct tape to the wall.
It is not art that represents the human condition.
What we need, as you were saying, is a kind of a cultural renewal, an American renaissance.
And I would love to see the NEA play a leading role in that.
Well, you know, we should mention that the banana tape to a wall with duct tape brought in $6.2 million to a cryptocurrency guy who then proceeded to eat the banana on stage.
So that is, I mean, that does speak to me about decadence.
I mean, in the literal sense of it, that is a society whose culture has decayed to the point almost of hilarity.
I personally, to be honest with you, would rather go into a, would rather play a video game and watch them at least bring kind of fairy tales to life than go into a modern art museum and see the things that are there, which are completely uninspiring.
But just so people understand this, what exactly does the National Endowment of the Arts do?
I mean, when people come, who comes to it for funding?
Sure.
And how do they get it?
So the National Endowment for the Arts largely gives out grants to arts organizations, state, local, and then other organizations throughout the country.
So it's a grant-making agency.
There are panels that review the grants, and then ultimately they're sent up to something called the National Council on the Arts, which gives a further recommendation.
And then ultimately, it's up to the chairman to decide whether or not to approve the grant.
I mean, of course, everything comes down to the panels, who is on the panels.
And the chairman, I believe, has strong influence. in determining who serves on them.
But in addition to these grants, the NEA does fund a number of initiatives that can be extremely worthwhile.
So very good ones that go back to Dana Joya include Shakespeare and American Communities, encouraging middle and high schools to put on Shakespeare productions.
There's also something called Poetry Out Loud, in which high school students have to memorize and recite poems.
And also, Dana created something called the Big Read, which encourages American communities to read the same classic works of literature at the same time.
But there's been a big problem there.
When Dana created it, there were four books that were offered, Fahrenheit 451, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zura Neale Hurston, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby.
These were all works that have proven to stand the test of time.
But starting under Obama, the reading list became far more expanded and splintered into, as one could predict, all sorts of multicultural identity politics suggestions, choices that are trendy contemporary works that have not proven that they have stood the test of time.
And were I chairman, I would like to return the big read to its original intent.
Yeah, you know, I mean, it's interesting in the same way that, let's say, Los Angeles worried about who was their, what their firefighters looked like and what kind of sex they had instead of whether they were equipped to put out fires in the same way we're doing that with the military.
I think in the arts, the same thing is happening.
I mean, publishers, especially since the George Floyd, you know, ruckus, publishers basically are publishing people according to their race.
They're being reviewed according to their race.
People who put out writers who happen to be white or male are having a very hard time getting reviewed.
So are these things aside from funding the kinds of, I mean, this is so important because conservatives historically have not been good about this.
Conservatives historically have basically felt that the arts didn't matter, that the arts were something that was kind of for intellectuals and sissies and we weren't going to pay attention to that.
And because of that, the left has virtually taken over the artistic world.
It doesn't have to be that way.
It wasn't always that way.
And it's actually been something that even since the Soviets, the Soviets actually had a program for recruiting artists to get them to do this.
So how do you turn that around?
I mean, when you have somebody paying $6 million for a banana, it seems to me to speak to something very deep in the soul of a nation.
And I'm wondering, can you fix that by fixing the art or do you have to somehow address that soul?
Well, that's a profound question.
I mean, when you talk about conservatives caring about the arts, I would say let's look at least as far back as Theodore Roosevelt, who was highly interested in art and architecture and even wrote a review of the 1930, 1913 Armory Show that introduced modern art into America.
He said that a national greatness wholly divorced from artistic production is but a one-sided, malformed greatness.
So there was, there has been understanding among conservative politicians of the importance of the arts.
And one area in which I think we can all agree the arts matter is our monuments and memorials.
Our public art is symbolic.
It's value-laden.
It ideally, you know, when appropriate, commemorates the best of our tradition.
And so I think this is a key area in which conservatives can direct their focus.
For too long, we've been getting things like the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, D.C., which is socialist, realist in design, and a completely secular memorial.
I mean, the words God and Reverend don't appear a single time.
By contrast, there's a new national World War I memorial in Washington, D.C., that is this magnificent classical bronze relief that actually evinces heroism and valor.
And yes, absolutely, it shows the suffering of valor, but it ends with an actual victory parade with the troops upholding the American flag as America rises on ascendance on the world stage.
And so thus, I think we can see the possibility of a new paradigm in American public art.
I mean, the sculptor himself, Saban Howard, has said there are no victims here.
He's trying to change the direction of our commemorative works, which essentially, since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, only portray people as victims.
And his work is also highly legible, meaning you can understand it without an audio guide or a tour guide.
It speaks for itself.
The symbolism is evident.
And so I think that there is hope for art in our culture.
And there are talented people out there, but they need to be platformed to use a term that the left likes to use.
They need to get the right sort of patronage.
And also, yes, we need to be supporting the schools that teach art in its proper way, teach actual skill as opposed to just, well, be innovative and creative without ever applying any sorts of principles.
So I do think that there is great opportunity in the culture.
You know, that's really interesting.
You know, there's a statue out in Alexandria, Virginia in the freed slave's graveyard, which was lost and they drove a highway through it and they wanted to recover it.
And they put up a sculpture called The Path of Thorns and Roses by Mario Shodo, I think his name is, who's quite talented.
And I have to say, you know, it is about slaves.
I suppose you could call them victims, but it's about them climbing up toward freedom.
And it has this wonderful sense of humanity.
But at the same time, you feel that the Trinity is being represented at the top of the vines, that they're actually climbing to heaven in some way.
And it's really quite beautiful.
When I saw it, I stopped in front of it for maybe half an hour without being able to move because I find most public statuary so void of any kind of feeling whatsoever.
And you mentioned that Martin Luther King thing, which is, you know, it's absurd in a lot of ways.
How did the World War I memorial, which is quite lovely, how did that get made?
How did that get past the gatekeepers?
Well, it all came down to the leadership of the commission creating the memorial.
The vice chairman was a guy named Edwin Fountain, who was, I mean, well, he is a friend, but like an old-fashioned traditional guy that had a vision for what he wanted.
And when I met with him early in the process to give you a sense of where he's coming from, he said he wanted an inscription in the memorial, this famous line from one of the officers before he led the soldiers out of a trench.
Competition and Sleep Solutions00:02:23
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So that's giving you a sense of where Edwin is coming from.
And he decided to host an open, blindly reviewed competition.
And the competition brief, which I helped draft in part, required that the design show heroism and valor.
And then I did recommend Sabin Howard, the winning sculptor, to recommend to enter the competition.
So there was an open competition guided with the right brief and also the right jury.
Because if you don't have the right competition brief or the right jury, you're not going to get a good result.
And so that's how we ended up having this happy story.
You know, and that I think now I highly recommend that everyone go visit it.
It's on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Treasury Department.
And maybe it will, you know, change the direction of American public art.
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Art Infrastructure Challenges00:15:10
Yeah, I mean, this is a problem throughout what I guess you call the art infrastructure, is even in museums, people are being put in there to sort of remove art by white people and, you know, put in art by indigenous people and all this.
And the problem with that, of course, is not the race of the artist.
It's the talent that has, as you said, has stood the test of time that you don't want to throw away for political reasons.
So this is, you know, I talked to, I've been talking to conservatives about art for over 20 years, and I have found it to be a frustrating uphill climb.
They're starting to catch on now.
I think it has the tone has changed.
But this really does go back to our founders.
I mean, when you drive around Washington, D.C., it's a beautiful city.
The mall is a beautiful, beautiful set of monuments, graceful, classical, impressive.
You walk into the Lincoln Memorial and you feel you are in the presence of something greater than yourself and not just stone.
There is a tradition, right?
An American tradition of caring about this.
This is not something we're not, we're making up now.
Well, I'm glad you mentioned that since one thing we haven't talked about is architecture.
The founding fathers, both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were talented amateur architects, and Jefferson was an actual genius designing Monticello, University of Virginia, the Virginia Capitol.
And both Washington and Jefferson consciously chose the classical tradition or the core buildings of government in the new nation, wishing to harken back to democratic antecedents in Rome and Greece, and also recognizing that the classical tradition is time-honored and timeless.
They inaugurated a tradition of classicism that lasted for about 150 years.
So, for instance, it went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which was built in the 1930s or the Jefferson Memorial in the 1940s.
These are buildings built in the quote-unquote modern era.
But the founders created this architectural tradition that I like to call the architecture of American democracy.
It is the architecture of civic virtue, buildings that ennoble us, that inspire us to be better people.
And then later, we do get these magnificent monuments and memorials in Washington and the design of the National Mall.
I mean, I hope people don't take this for granted.
I mean, there are plenty of other world capitals out there who are not nearly as lovely, and yet Americans uphold these works of art as iconic symbols of the nation.
And President Trump, to his credit, at the end of his first term, issued an executive order that reoriented federal architecture, which had been almost entirely modernist and ugly since World War II.
He reoriented it in a classical and traditional direction, requiring that new buildings actually be appreciated by the general public as opposed to architectural and cultural elites.
And the order also required that there be an element of public input when design decisions are being made.
And so thus, there would be an element of democracy in design for the first time.
Now, unfortunately, Biden rescinded that order almost immediately after taking office, but I'd be shocked if Trump does not reissue it.
And architecture is also something that I would like to focus on at the National Endowment for the Arts to celebrate this grand tradition of American civic architecture that also includes magnificent buildings like the original Penn Station in New York, which was also a classical design.
But architecture is a really interesting domain since it bridges the divide between high culture and common culture.
Our public buildings are designed by architects who, yes, are highly educated, sophisticated, and if they're educated in the right way, know proper principles and standards.
At the same time, the audience are ordinary people, everyday Americans who can appreciate these works of architecture, which are appreciated now, ideally, and appreciated for generations and centuries to come.
So therefore, architecture can sort of be this unifying force in the country.
You know, it's really interesting.
I've noticed too that architecture affects the way people behave.
You walk into, you know, you walk into Notre Dame or you walk even into some of the buildings in DC and people just behave better.
They feel that they're in a sacred space.
They feel that they're in an important space, something that represents something big.
And they become quieter and they become less rowdy.
And it really is an amazing thing.
Trump is an interesting character here.
I mean, I know you're a supporter of his, and I think, you know, he transformed.
People forget that he transformed the skyline of New York in quite a decent way at a moment when New York was kind of, you know, really expanding and rising.
And yet at the same time, he's always being hit for, you know, his garish Trumpian overstep, you know, the big gold letters and all that stuff, which I think is part of his sense of humor.
But he's really quite good at this.
I mean, the hotel, was it a post office that he took over in Washington and he turned it into a Trump hotel?
That was a beautiful piece of renovation.
So I would imagine that if you were to get into the National Endowment, that he would be very sympathetic to this.
I would think so.
I mean, at CPAC in 2023, he said we will get rid of bad and ugly buildings and build in the classical style of Western civilization.
So he's situating these buildings within that grand tradition.
So yes, I have all the hope in the world that big things will happen.
You know, there could be an agenda, make America beautiful again.
I mean, I think one thing that we're hearing from the right is tremendous cultural optimism right now.
You know, that's why they see how the National Endowment for the Arts and the other cultural agencies can be forces of good as opposed to just support for the status quo.
So, you know, I do have, you know, great hope for what will happen in the coming administration.
So it's easy to see how government has a hand in architecture.
But let's talk about some of the other things that are going on, because really the left's grip on our culture has been a stranglehold for at least the last 30 years, and maybe more of that.
It was an intentional thing.
I have so many friends and acquaintances in the arts who have been canceled for the slightest rebellion against socialist or leftist doctrine.
A friend whose career was just crushed because he was seen in a MAGA hat.
And these are artists, so they're all sensitive people.
And when their careers are taken away from them, they're endangered.
I mean, they're really, you know, it drives people insane.
It's a terrible thing to see.
What are the other ways that the National Endowment of the Arts can reach in to some of the art forms that have now become completely alienated from the people?
I mean, painting, for instance, is an art form that no living human person wants to experience.
You know, it's basically a way of laundering money for the rich.
When I said that I would rather play a video game, I'm not kidding.
There are video games that are quite beautiful.
The movie that I just saw, Nosferato, has got more visual beauty in it than anything I've seen in the modern wing of a museum.
In fact, sometimes when I go to the older wings of the museum, it breaks my heart to see what we've lost.
What are other ways that the, you know, obviously you don't want the government telling artists what to do, and yet, you know, it didn't hurt for Michelangelo to have a patron.
You know, it doesn't hurt necessarily to patronize the good art.
We have a MacArthur grant that gives grants to people who are absolute talentless buffoons.
What are some of the ways that the National Endowment can reach into the arts that people love?
Movies, television novels, all those things, and make a difference?
Or is there a way?
Well, I think maybe one mistake that the NEA has been making for a long time is giving out too many grants, drips and drabs, $10,000 here, $25,000 there.
And by contrast, I think certain key pieces of works of art or literature of music can have a very large impact.
You know, we don't need a thousand great novels being written, but to have 10 great ones, that could be, you know, the sort of thing that the NEA could be proud of.
The same thing for symphonies or operas or even paintings.
You know, we need works that redound to American greatness.
And there are artists out there.
So, for instance, in painting, I would point to a New York painter named Jacob Collins, who can paint in the style of the old masters, who is incredibly, incredibly talented.
And there are all sorts of architects.
We've already been talking about architecture, but we need to fund the schools, not just the organizations that might support this or that particular architect.
And so I think that's one thing that the NEA ought to focus on.
You know, it's interesting.
And this is not a question that I expect some kind of definitive answer to, but just as a point of discussion about a subject that's near and dear to my heart.
Recently, I think it's just closing, there was an exhibit of some of the first Impressionist paintings that made such a splash when they first came out.
And so they were arranged in kind of a replica of that first exhibit.
But interspersed with them were some of the contemporary classical paintings that were in there.
And I was walking through and thinking, gee, I like the classical paintings better than the Impressionists.
There's some beautiful Impressionist paintings, but still, I like the classical style.
And yet I understood that the Impressionists were doing something that was right for their time.
In other words, I understood that they were expressing a moment in time when the camera had been invented, when it was a question of what new could be done with the art form of painting.
And it made me wonder: is there something inevitable about that banana being taped to a wall?
Is there something that we can't just fix by making better art?
Or is the better art in some way an expression of a silenced voice in the culture that is still somehow there?
These are deep philosophical questions.
They are.
Does the culture itself determine the sort of art that it produces?
Yes.
And I would say that there have been plenty of terrible societies that have produced great art.
I mean, just think about Russian history, whether it's under the Tsar or the Soviet Union, where you had suffering artists, you know, people like Dostoevsky, you know, writing some of the greatest novels of all time.
So there's not this direct relationship between, say, a bad society producing bad art.
So I think we need to be more optimistic than that.
Even if you think America is in decline or, you know, we're suffering decadence, that doesn't mean that we can't have great works of art, music, and literature.
I'm not a pessimist about that at all.
And in fact, I mean, what's that famous line from the movie The Third Man, in which Orson Welles' character says, you know, looking at 500 years of Swiss history of peace and prosperity, and all you get is the cuckoo clock.
By contrast, you know, you look at Italy and the Renaissance where you have the Borgias and bloodshed, and yet we also have Michelangelo and Donatello.
So it's a lot more complicated than just saying, well, you know, the art is produced by the times.
Even if there is maybe a general negativity, that doesn't mean that you can't have counterexamples.
That's an excellent point.
Since I'm putting you on the spot with these philosophical questions, let me ask one more because we're just about out of time.
But one of the things that I think has been true of the arts is that in many ways, the idea of God and religion has been exiled from them.
And this is a very, very intentional thing.
I mean, I used to work in Hollywood.
I was in meetings where people noticed that religious movies made a lot of money and they would just say, yeah, but we're not doing that.
That's not us.
We don't want that in our movies.
And I think it's hurt the movies.
Is there any reason the National Endowment of the Arts can't take into account that maybe religion, as on occasion it has, produces art that is somehow higher and loftier than the art we're getting now?
I mean, I don't see why the NEA can't support art that has a religious purpose, that wishes to acknowledge and achieve the transcendent.
I don't think there's like a First Amendment prohibition or anything like that.
But like I said, if the highest art is beautiful, profound, and moving, it wouldn't be surprising that there is that spiritual element behind some of our greatest works.
Yeah, yeah.
Talking to Justin Schubau, who's now the president of the National Civic Art Society, which is a nonprofit organization promoting the classical tradition in public art and architecture, wants to be the head of the National Endowment of the Arts.
So what's the process here?
Did you put in your name?
Do you have people that you can put in your name?
Well, there's a transition team with, you know, underway right now.
It's very complicated and it's sort of a black box.
You know, it's unclear how it's operating from the outside.
And it's even, I think, unclear from even some people on the inside about how it's working.
But, you know, my hope is that, you know, I mean, I know that I've been receiving endorsements from influential people, whether it's members of Congress or, to be honest, or donors or writers or editors, cultural figures who have been in touch with the transition team directly and also people saying things publicly as sort of part of a campaign, for lack of a better term.
Renewal Hope Talks00:01:10
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I have to say, I love your ideas.
I like the way you're thinking about it.
And I like what you're thinking about.
I think it's about time.
I mean, it really is.
It's a central part of the renewal that I hope we're about to see.
Justin Shubo, we hope to see you less and less next time I talk to you.
I hope you're the head of the National Endowment of the Arts.
And it's been great talking to you.
I think this is some of the most interesting stuff going on.
It's really going to be on the razor's edge which way it goes.
So good luck.
Well, thanks for having me.
That's great talking to you.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Once again, Justin Shubo, president of the National Civic Art Society.
And I hope the guy makes it.
You know, I think this is so important.
We don't realize that this is the kind of thing government does and they do it, have done it in the past so badly and with such ill intent for our country, without patriotism, without faith, without even honesty in the arts, just this kind of weird leftist agenda that always is looking at some way of accusing people of being racist and sexist and all the rest of the stuff.
I hope he makes it.
It would be an amazing, amazing change.
And I hope you make it to Friday's show, the Andrew Clavin Show.