When I was a teaching assistant for art historian Vincent Scully in 1970, Bobby Seale, cofounder of the Black Panthers, was on trial in New Haven. It was a fraught period, and I remember the charismatic professor-then so popular that his course on modern architecture was held in the Yale Law School auditorium, the most capacious space on campus-giving an impassioned lecture in which he explained why, in those desperate moments when the police were using tear gas in New Haven and people were so filled with rage and a sense of urgency, he had taken refuge in listening to a Beethoven quartet. He concluded his talk by saying, "Everyone needs everything." I disagree with Scully about many things, but I cherish his idea that we need art as much as physical health, that culture and sports are vital in spite of the pressing need to confront dire poverty and suffering. The modernist artist and teacher Josef Albers even believed that the color yellow had the power to heal.
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