William D. Adams with Phong Bui

Artist William D. Adams and the Brooklyn Rail’s publisher Phong Bui discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.

We’d like to thank Sikkema Jenkins & Co for supporting this conversation. Check out their current exhibitions here.

William D. Adams was Chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities from 2014-2017. In that capacity, he initiated several new grantmaking programs under the banner of The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square. Upon leaving NEH, Adams was named a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where he continued his national advocacy on behalf of the humanities. Prior to NEH, Adams served as President of Colby College from 2000-2014, President of Bucknell University from 1995-2000, and Vice President and Secretary of Wesleyan University from 1988-1995. He taught political philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and at Santa Clara University, and coordinated the Great Works in Western Culture Program at Stanford University.

Adams received his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his B.A. in philosophy from the Colorado College. He is currently working on a book about the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the painter Paul Cézanne.

Phong Bui is the Publisher and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail.

The New Social Environment — Daily conversations with artists, writers, filmmakers, poets around the world where we discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.