Inaugural reflections on our golden era (or golden years?) of art and politics

Today, more than a half century later, it seems like the beginning of a golden age in the relationship between art and politics, inaugurated on the inauguration day of John F. Kennedy. Robert Frost, an octogenarian poet with a statesman-like shock of white hair, read a poem from the presidential lectern, and the African American contralto Marian Anderson, a living legend of American arts who had once been snubbed by the fine white ladies of the Daughters of the American Revolution, sang the nati...