Why do the arts matter for democracy, and what happens to democracy when art disappears? Members of the Wellesley community gathered in the Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall auditorium October 6 to hear answers to these pressing questions during this year’s combined Caroline A. Wilson ’10 and Betsy Wood Knapp ’64 Lecture, which took the form of a discussion that, as Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, put it, served as “a reminder that art can still mean something.”
The event, “Urgent Witness: Why the Arts Matter for Democracy,” featured Walker and Emily Wei Rales ’98, director and co-founder of the contemporary art museum Glenstone. Wellesley College President Paula A. Johnson introduced Walker and Rales, calling the lecture “part of our responsibility as a liberal arts college—to educate citizens who understand that exposure to the arts generates empathy, understanding, and community.”
This matter is one of institutional importance, Johnson said. “The critical role that the arts play in healthy democracy could not be more relevant as we face the indiscriminate, and sometimes seemingly punitive, defunding of higher education, defunding of arts and humanities,” she said. “We have a responsibility to educate citizens who understand that exposure to the arts generates empathy.”
Wellesley’s dedication to protecting these values shines through many of its alums, including Rales. She came to Wellesley intending to be premed because her parents told her she should be a doctor, but after taking an art history class, Rales said she knew she would never look at or experience art the same way again. “Art gives you a license to dream,” she said. “It’s how we imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist.” At Glenstone, which Rales and her husband, Mitchell Rales, founded in 2006 in Potomac, Md., modern buildings and natural outdoor spaces alike feature contemporary art and sculpture.
“Art gives you a license to dream. It’s how we imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist.”
Walker, meanwhile, uses philanthropy to advance justice. In addressing the idea that empathy is learned through experiencing the arts, he reflected on his upbringing in rural Texas and his long career in arts patronage. Walker said that “no one who’s truly experienced art would ever use dehumanizing language to describe another person.” At the end of the day, he said, “art teaches us to recognize ourselves in others.”
Over the course of their hour-long conversation, Rales and Walker talked about the ways imagination fuels civic life. The ability to dream, empathize, and question connects directly to democratic health, they said. For the students in attendance who often balance theory, activism, and empathy, there was much to gain and learn from.
At the end of the discussion, audience members asked how these dreams could be achieved in the workforce and how they could be a part of the social change they want to see. As Abby Kubena ’26 put it after the event, “Wellesley can hold spaces for contradictions.” Additionally, space was created for those attending the discussion to clear up their own thoughts. “It made me think about failure and experimentation as part of the process—not just for artists, but for citizens,” said Lillian Goins ’26.
The evening closed not with easy answers, but with an invitation to keep making, asking, and imagining. Art and democracy both rely on this participation, especially if change is wanted. “Art lets us dream of the world we want,” Rales said. And as Walker reminded the audience “Hope is the radical response.” At Wellesley, both feel like calls to action.