It is not always those among us who survive and thrive in brutal environments who are the best of us. If anything, they almost never are. In such a world, it is almost always those who have the courage to feel—those who open their hearts—who are punished for it and lose. A lesson to anyone who dares to do the same. And so we strengthen. We go cold. We are afraid to say anything that the crowd might object to. We are afraid of them, we are afraid of our neighbors, we are afraid everywhere. How can a world function when everyone in it is constantly afraid? It can’t. And while some of us – the brave –die as Hilde Lynn Helphenstein didovernight, tragically, instantly, the rest of us do it silently, cowardly and slowly.
I’ve seen too much of this in the art world to shut up. Courage deserves mention. Few women ever break into this world – and when they do, they are treated barbarically. No wonder most would rather fade into the background than be seen. Women, the industry quietly says, are not enough on their own – they feel compelled to undergo surgery, to stay young, to remain beautiful. Men don’t feel the same pressures. Hilda was even attacked, I read in passing, by an artist who accused her of betraying the working class. Working class. As if the art world as it exists today has anything to do with the working-class towns of Kentucky and Pennsylvania or the backwoods of Maine and Texas.
Since when was the art world for the working class? I have yet to see a working class man or woman walk into a SoHo or Chelsea gallery and feel truly welcome. Art is one of the few things that can help ordinary people endure extraordinary hardships. This is not a choice made every day by an industry that talks about accessibility while building higher walls.
The art world is presented as progressive, liberal, enlightened. It is none of those things – and nothing reveals this more clearly than who holds the pen. At the New York Times, both visual arts staff critics are white men. This is the electric seat. This is where artists are legitimized or buried, where galleries rise or disappear, where careers are made with a single review. And in 2026, in the newspaper that lectures this nation every day on race and equality, none of those seats belong to a woman or a person of color.
I’m not someone who deals with racial politics. I believe in the best person for the role, nothing more. But in a country of 330 million people — a nation of extraordinary racial, cultural and gender diversity — consistently landing the same demographic in the same chair as during the segregation era is no accident. The odds against him are staggering. Which means it’s not a coincidence. It’s a preference. Silenced, institutionally protected, and made grotesque by the fact that the institution doing it is the loudest voice in the room on the subject of equality. This is not progressivism. This is performance.
Many in the art world—especially artists—imagine an art world that simply doesn’t exist. I was never interested in the art world. I was interested in the actual world. Art belongs to only one world, and that is the same world in which we all wake up. It was never meant to be elitist, exclusionary or as harsh and judgmental as it has become.
Art is about conveying across time, culture and language the human experience that unites us all. That simple nod of understanding between seemingly different human beings – reminding us of our common humanity. I wish it was more about the working class. For the millions who wake up every day and go to work, who don’t have the luxury of pontificating on life’s big issues, but who can be touched in ways they never expected, if only they were allowed to experience it. Sometimes it’s nothing more than that standing in front of a work of art before going to work, only to realize years later that it was that very moment that gave them the courage to continue.
If evil exists in this world, it killed the spirit of humanity by seducing the art world with capital. The circle became smaller, more exclusive. We began to fetishize certain artists and certain names and forgot what art is, robbing humanity of one of the last tools we had to remember that despite everything, commercialization, materialism, decadence, there remained within us something we once treasured. A soul.
Maybe it’s time to stop and take stock of how far we’ve gone—and how completely we’ve gone. We constantly hear about closing the galleriesabbreviation, the model of the art world broken beyond repair– all desperate to discover the secret of survival. Maybe the secret is, and always has been, the one thing we had and lost. The model that has seemed so elusive begins with galleries rooted again in the heart of the owner. Because when you’ve forgotten you ever had one, you’ll spend the rest of your days trying to figure out with your mind how to fix something that only the heart can do.
Georges Bergès is the founder and owner of the Georges Bergès Gallery. He still believes that art is not a luxury but a necessity in life. Art for the journey of life.
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