A Note of Gratitude to My Readers

On being Dedicated to Art and Free to All

This is a thank you note to everyone who subscribes to my newsletter. Your interest and thoughtful feedback mean the world to me. I’m especially appreciative of the kind notes and emails, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know you all in the comment section.

2023 was a terrible year for me on a personal level. Things happened that I cannot bring myself to discuss in plain language. But they emerge in my work all the same.

I spent 2023 in active and anticipatory grief. This creates a loneliness that is hard to convey. What got me through it was writing. When you are writing, you converse with your imagination, you reunite with your memories, you make permanent the things that slip away.

You are never alone, even when you are by yourself. Reading is like that too, and I hope I create that experience for you.

I spent the first nine months of 2023 writing a book. In October I started this newsletter. I wish I had started it sooner! I’m relieved to be doing what I love the way that I want to do it. And I’m excited to already have readers in all fifty states and over 25 countries.

The only reason this newsletter is possible is because of the generosity of paying subscribers. Paying subscribers are how I am able to keep my writing accessible to all.

I plan to keep this newsletter free. I do not want a paywall. I want everyone to have equal access. I do not want anyone who reads my books or listened to me on Gaslit Nation (which I have left) to be locked out. I understand why writers use paywalls; we are all struggling to pay bills. But I would like to avoid any blockade on information.

I believe it is possible to keep things free to all. That’s because I live in St. Louis.

In St. Louis, most museums are free, along with the zoo and the parks. They stay free in part because of a small public tax, and because people voluntarily become paying members. Their membership fees help keep institutions afloat, and everyone benefits.

When I moved to St. Louis, I had no money and a newborn. I raised my baby at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Over a century ago, “Dedicated to Art and Free to All,” was carved in stone on the museum façade, ensuring they could never charge admission. I took full advantage. For a decade, that museum was my second home.

When my daughter was an infant, I walked her in a stroller though the art museum halls several times a week. When she learned to crawl, she did it in Oceania, because Oceania had carpeting and few visitors. The security guards – who knew me by then -- gave me permission. I had told them how I could not afford to buy a rug, and I was worried she was hurting her knees on our apartment floor. My daughter crawled on Oceania’s soft surface and gazed into another world.

If you are one of those security guards reading this, thank you again.

When my daughter was three, we started attending Family Sunday. This is a free program where children do an art project in the main hall, surrounded by the paintings of Max Beckmann, who came to St. Louis as a refugee fleeing Nazi Germany. Beckmann is my favorite artist, and that was true before I moved to St. Louis. It was a happy coincidence that I could look at my favorite paintings while doing arts and crafts with my favorite person.

My daughter and I developed a Sunday ritual: art project, cookie break, knights and mummies, and whatever exhibit struck her interest. When she was seven, she discovered Hieronymus Bosch, and she loved him, because she is truly my child. The day after we went to the Bosch exhibit, I found her notebook, and it looked like this:

But she also loved Art in Bloom, when the museum fills with flowers. She loved watching the international musicians and dancers who would give free performances, and she loved the free scavenger hunts that made learning into a game.

My little daughter treated the paintings like friends, which is how I saw them too. She told me to look at the objects on the right wall while she looked at the left wall, so that “none of the art feels left out.”

In 2011, my other favorite person, my son, was born. We first tried to bring him to the museum when he was four. He asked why there was a rope winding around the room. I told him it was to keep people from getting too close to the paintings.

“What happens if I jump over the rope?”

“An alarm will go off.”

“How loud?”

“Really loud.”

“Like super-duper loud?”

“Yes. You don’t want to—”

He leapt over it immediately.

We brought him back when he was seven and could be trusted with security alarms and crafts involving glue. By then, my daughter had become our tour guide. She showed her brother the domed room where, if you stare at the ceiling just right, a hypnotic pattern emerges. She showed him the Ernst Kirchner painting of an orange-faced, butter-haired man who looks like Donald Trump, and they laughed together in horror.

She showed him the “secret rooms” downstairs. These are just side rooms displaying furniture from different historical eras, but I had told her they were secret, and she liked believing only we knew of their existence. Now she could let her brother in on the secret too. They analyzed every object, looking for clues to a mystery of their own making.

At the end of the day, the two of them would go tearing down Art Hill to the fountains of Forest Park. I would chase after them, but not before reading the other motto carved into the museum façade: “Art Still Has Truth: Take Refuge There.”

*        *        *

In March 2020, the museum shut down for months due to the pandemic. Family Sunday shut down for two years. And that part of my life ended.

By the time Family Sunday returned, my daughter was a teenager with her own weekend routine. She still loves the museum. She says it’s the first place she’s driving to when she gets her license. I’m happy to have a teenager whose great dream of independence is an art museum, but I miss our early days.

In 2020, another thing changed: I became a paying member of the St. Louis Art Museum, even though I go less often. I did not do it for myself. I did it for the parents who struggle to pay bills and who find relief and joy in a free museum.

I remain a paying member because I believe art should be free, and that those who have more money should cover costs for those with less.

That is the model I’m following for this newsletter. I could make more money with a paywall, but I’d feel bad about it.

So, if you can afford to subscribe, please consider it! And if you can’t, I’ll still be here, welcoming you.

Anyway, the point of this note is to say thank you to everyone. It is a great feeling to have people read my work. I never take it for granted.

I don’t know what the future holds. But I know I’ll keep writing here on a regular basis, and I hope you keep reading. In a hard year, this has been a pleasure.

Thanks everybody,

Sarah

Max Beckmann, The King. This is my favorite painting.

Words to live by.