Laura Raicovich, former director of the Queens Museum, describes how she turned to jewelry-making in 2024 as a personal refuge from political chaos and doomscrolling. She began by ice-dyeing pillows and later enrolled in Carolina Iwanow's jewelry classes in Williamsburg, eventually renting a studio bench where she now spends two to three days a week working with silver, gold, and ancient intaglios. Raicovich argues that this hands-on creative practice has been grounding and has given her the mental space to resist the overwhelming horrors of contemporary life.
Raicovich contends that art and culture are wrongly seen as non-essential in the US, when in fact they are fundamental to human experience and imagination. She warns that confining art to institutions funded by a narrow elite risks losing its potential to foster justice and freedom. The piece connects her personal creative journey to a broader critique of how art is separated from daily life, arguing that direct attacks on cultural freedoms—such as federal constraints on the Smithsonian—reflect a systemic effort to limit art's transformative power.