Book Review As an artist who lived through the Reagan-era Culture Wars, I recommend Isaac Butler’s “The Perfect Moment” for the stories that parallel our current fight to defend creative expression.

October 23, 2026 — 4 min read

A self-portrait by Robert Mapplethorpe projected onto the facade of the Corcoran Gallery of Art during a protest on 30, 1989 (photo Carol Guzy/the Washington Post via Getty Images, all images courtesy Bloomsbury)

Critic and theater director Isaac Butler is younger than I am, so he didn’t live through the Culture Wars of the Reagan ’80s. During this time, for instance, the Morality Action Committee wrote postcards to legislators across the country claiming that Franklin Furnace — the arts organization I founded 50 years ago — had shown pornography to 500 children per day during our Carnival Knowledge exhibition of women artists exploring sexuality.…