GO BE BEAUTIFUL!!

GO BE BEAUTIFUL!

Lately I’ve been thinking about where my little phrase “GO BE BEAUTIFUL” actually came from.

For five years I served on the McKnight Distinguished Artist committee. We were responsible for selecting the recipient of the Distinguished Artist Award — then $50,000, now $100,000 — a serious responsibility. It was always such a joy to do this.

During that time something happened to me that I didn’t expect. For the first time in my long career, I was in the minority. I was the only white, straight man in the room. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t immediately comfortable. There were moments I felt judged by my appearance before I had even spoken. After decades of moving through the art world with a certain kind of unexamined ease, that experience landed hard.

But I stayed. I listened. And something shifted.

What I began to experience wasn’t exclusion. It was shared leadership, real shared leadership. Intelligence distributed across lived experiences very different from my own. Authority that did not default to me. Perspectives that were foundational, not ornamental.

And instead of feeling diminished, I felt lighter.

Lighter because I didn’t have to carry the room. Lighter because the room didn’t need to look like me to function. Lighter because the work was stronger when it was truly diverse.

After one meeting I walked out with this phrase in my head:

GO BE BEAUTIFUL.

Not “go be right.”

Not “go win.”

Not “go dominate.”

Go be beautiful.

To me, that means choosing openness over defensiveness. It means seeing strength in diversity rather than feeling threatened by it. It means understanding that shared power isn’t loss, it’s expansion.

I post “GO BE BEAUTIFUL” often. Some people probably think it’s just a feel-good slogan. It isn’t. It was born from discomfort. From humility. From realizing I didn’t have to be centered to be valuable.

We live in a moment when the temptation is to harden. But I’ve been in a room where something better happened.

So when I say GO BE BEAUTIFUL, I mean: stay open. Stay curious. Share the weight. See the humanity in the room, especially when it doesn’t look like you.

That’s where the lightness is.

GO BE BEAUTIFUL