Hello John,

Last month, our campus came alive as more than 200 friends and supporters gathered for ISI’s 18th Annual Gala for Western Civilization. Poet and former National Endowment for the Arts chair Dana Gioia accepted the Charles H. Hoeflich Lifetime Achievement Award and reflected on how Beauty Will Save America. Painter Jamie Wyeth unveiled his new portrait of Linda L. Bean and received the inaugural Linda L. Bean Prize for Advancing American Art & Culture.

If you weren’t able to make it, you can still experience the heart of the evening. On the afternoon of the gala, Gioia sat down with Dan McCarthy in ISI’s Studio 53 to discuss becoming a poet, teaching verse, and the future of the arts.