A New Renaissance is Underway

America needs a cultural rebirth and a new vision for what is possible, not unlike how Europe needed a cultural “rinascità” (“rebirth”) to rise out of the stagnation of the Middle Ages. Just as the Italian Renaissance emerged from the darkness of the Bubonic Plague, a new artistic Renaissance in America will be timely and is already underway.

Back in the 14th and 15th Century, Europe needed the Plague to destabilize the ossified cultural and social order and open up the dawn of a new era. What fueled the Italian Renaissance and connected the artists, writers, philosophers, and patrons together was a movement of what it means to be human. The primary inspiration came not from religion, but from a return to the classical Greek philosophical traditions of humanism. According to Plato, the world is as a living being, whose general vitality is supported by a “world soul”. Art is one of the great enablers of human connection and personal growth, as well as a reminder of what it means to be human — an antidote to cynicism, hopelessness, and demagoguery.

While the world cherishes works from Renaissance Masters like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes or DaVinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” the pump is already primed for a far more democratic Renaissance in America. When you visit the places in America where some of the most significant cultural renewal and reinvention has taken…