We’ve set out to give artists, writers, and thought leaders a platform to shape our media landscape—the way we think about and value women and minorities in the arts and culture needs to change. We as a society need to keep pushing for equality for our children, and with that, future humans will live better lives more peacefully. A Women’s Thing and its contributors are participating in that change.

In 2014, we started as a tribe of women here in New York wanting to do our share of voicing our take on the political and societal climate back then: Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” had just come out, equal pay and gender equality, in general, were starting to become hot topics again, and people rediscovered going onto the streets to protest. 

The conversations have evolved. We are seeing progress, at least in our small liberal pockets. And AWT has grown too. We’ve switched from quarterly print issues to publishing online. With that, we also took our broader content coverage around feminist matters into a more specific corner that needs a lot of work: arts and culture. We’ve always anchored our print issues and the articles we publish in a variety of artwork. From the beginning, we’ve worked with local galleries and galleries from around the world to show what female artists have to say about the topics we were writing about.

AWT has been an exciting project since its beginning over seven years ago. It’s been a journey of partaking in and pushing for societal change, community building, and entrepreneurship. We’ve had over 350 contributors, from writers to artists to curators and designers. Getting to know them and building deeper relationships and friendships because of shared interests has been a very heart-warming and satisfying experience. This experience has stuck with me, and I find it surprising how in the end, it is again the human connection that matters most. 

I’ve been in New York for over a decade now, and every time I come back from travels, I feel a natural fit between the city and me. New York is about people; it’s about people trying things and people on a path to finding themselves. There are many cultures that all need to work together and you need to find a tiny space to settle into and go along for the ride. 

This city asks you to learn from others, be the best version of yourself, and be fast at it. If you’re accepting the challenge, living here can be a fulfilling experience. Overall, New York’s made me tremendously humble and appreciative of other humans. 

We’re continuing our journey of giving women and minorities a way to publish and let their voices be heard. In return, we keep building out our platform, our network, and community of like-minded thought leaders so that everyone can help and strengthen each other—may that be through shared exhibitions, promoting each other’s work or simply by creating visibility that deserves to be seen. 

The aha moment happened in 2004 when I presented a reception for “Peoples Portrait” by Chinese artist Zhang Ga at Chelsea Art Museum where I was curator of new media and performing arts. It was the first internet artwork for public space. In real time, it connected big screens in international cities that were connected to kiosks where people would snap their picture and see themselves on the screen alternating with pictures of people participating in other cities. I thought, wow, the internet could be used for an ongoing program to circulate artworks on screens in public spaces in every part of the world. I finally made it happen in 2008. 

Technology makes it possible for the arts to be viewed in public spaces and online by millions—or an audience of 5 in Antarctica. Times Square’s Midnight Moment program exhibits a single artwork nightly for one month across its jumbo screens, (pre-Covid) reaching 560,000 passersby. I think that for many reasons, museums should be circulating their collections in public spaces. In 2014, a very successful high visibility exhibition program called Art Everywhere, organized by an outdoor advertising organization, displayed across the US 58 works of American art that had been selected by 5 museums and voted on by the public.  

I’ve co-produced exhibitions, and programs of art and conversations with cross-disciplinary professionals, presented at cultural centers and other venues. We’ve looked at how art and technology sharpen how we see the world and help create solutions to critical problems. Art is essential to imaging the future we want and motivating everyone to make it happen. 

In Centerpoint Now, the publication of World Council of Peoples for the United Nations that I co-produced for the UN’s 75th anniversary, art acts as a conduit for interpreting the viewpoints of astronauts, global economic experts, artificial intelligence, neuroscientists, UN leaders and many others. Astronaut Nicole Stott said art helps professionals communicate to people the complexities of their work. Art changes minds by changing hearts. 

Our programming will continue to connect the arts with topics relating to the environment and social issues. To reach different audiences, the same message can be reflected in works of “fine art” and of popular culture as well. For example, scientific studies about bias, power and peace at UCLA’s Kindness Center or The Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab at University of Pennsylvania, can be interpreted in a painting such as The World is Yours, The World is Mine by Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander. That content can also be communicated in a rock song, like “I See You” by Scottish singer Nathalie Clark, which has a clear message that world leaders should hear. 

It’s rewarding to hear that someone has been inspired by a Streaming Museum program. And it’s rewarding to work with collaborators internationally and experience their different cultures and viewpoints, and at the same time, sense the interconnectedness of everything. It’s been fascinating, for example, to hear firsthand from astronauts we’ve presented in our programs about their own transformative experience of seeing the earth while in space. I’m curious too about trans-historic connections in art, and the science behind how our senses experience a narrow band of reality, and what we’re not seeing. All of this influences my own music compositions and teaching piano in creative ways that connect young people to big ideas. 

A photographer for the New York Times once said to me, Cyndie you are the most creative person I have ever known.  How did you get this way?  And I didn’t even know how to answer:  I didn’t “get” this way, I was born this way.  My eyes see beauty in everything. So when people talk about my incredible energy, or my optimism, it’s simply the way that the arts are mine.  Worked their way into my life. They ARE who I am. 

I was seriously injured and my ballet career was ruined by age 15, but the discipline I learned while dancing is irreplaceable.  And my approach to everything has remained kinesthetic. Suddenly I’m working with my daughter—once upon a time the guinea pig for HiArt!—helping to produce her films.  It’s fantastic. I’m like a shape shifter. Continually changing, creating, making, watching. 

Time In grew out of HiArt! By 2000, NY Magazine had declared HiArt! the Best Of New York Children’s Arts Program.  Everyone from David Bowie, Hugh Jackman, Inez & Vinoodh,  and Annie Liebovitz to Wendi Deng, Mort Zuckerman and Gina MacArthur were in the program.  We had gallerists and TV and movie stars, attorneys and financiers.  And all along I gave scholarships to kids who needed help.

In 2006 I said, “Now we need to do this for kids who could never come.  Their parents are not saying,  “My kid needs opera and art, they’re saying where am I sleeping, what am I eating . . . if that.”   The caveat was that there couldn’t be a rich kids’ and a poor kids’ program. They had to be identical.  And for that to happen, TimeIn had to be part of the school day and happen off campus—either at our studio in Chelsea or at museums or galleries.  Part of school, but outside of the school building.  

On October 3, 2006 with very few dollars in hand, Time In began teaching Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte to its first kindergarteners in Harlem.  The rest is history.  Since then we’ve changed the lives of thousands of kids in with seven seriously challenged public elementary schools in three boroughs. 

Time In is a totally democratic program.  We don’t select students, we take the whole class, the whole grade and—if the school is willing—the whole school.  We start with kids on their first days in school (now that means from age 2.5) and the idea is to keep the students as they move through grades for EIGHT YEARS.  We work exclusively with challenged, Title 1 schools.  Children in domestic violence and homeless shelters, the projects, scary tenements.  Many are in single parent homes or foster care. In fact, I am even fostering one of my former students myself.  The need is so great in NYC’s chronically impoverished communities of color.  There is NO equity.  We live in a crumbs mentality - something is better than nothing. But it really isn’t. Our kids need sustained support and that’s what TimeIn is about.

Devastated us.  Our staff that worked together for so many years has been completely disbursed.  The fundraising climate has shifted away from grass roots and now embraces bigger orgs with bigger budgets but a lot smaller impact. Why?  Because their work is more diluted, less sustained and more money is spent on metrics rather than on children.  TimeIn is transparent: we don’t ask for money when we can’t do our real program.

Money is an obvious answer.  With money you can rebuild artistic staff and infrastructure.  We need new leadership — if you are retired or don’t need to work, bring your expertise here.  Help us bring on new leadership or BE that leadership. Work on our Board of Directors.  Or our Advisory.  Write grants for us. Very small non-profits like TimeIn, decimated by the pandemic, could use whatever help you can bring to the table.  The task is huge:  to change the lives and weltanschaung of children living in chronic poverty, . . . so that someday they too will see beauty everywhere.  That’s where the power is, that’s where the hope is and that’s where we need to be.