LOS ANGELES — I’m hesitant to call “Melania” propaganda because I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and thinking that Melania Trump comes off well. If this vapid, airless, mindless time-waster had subversive designs of being a satire about the first lady of the United States, there’s not much it would have changed. Yet somehow, “Melania” is exactly the film that the first lady wanted to make — her company was paid $40 million for the rights to this self-greenlit production — and no one around her warned that it was a very expensive bad idea.

“Melania” didn’t screen for critics and, of the dozen people in my AMC theater on opening day last Friday, half of us were journalists paying to play catch-up. Introducing “Melania” at its Kennedy Center premiere the night before, the lead herself insisted that it is not a documentary but a “very deliberate act of authorship inviting you to witness events and emotions through a window of rich imagery.” Mostly, it’s B-roll of Melania stepping in and out of SUVs. My best guess is her pay rate is a million dollars an hour.

The president is effusive the first time that he greets his wife on an airplane tarmac alongside the film crew. “A movie star!” Trump says with a grin. He has a couple reasons to sound happy. For one, he’s getting to actually make public eye contact with his wife. As a bonus, she even offers up her cheek for a peck, which is as affectionate as things get between them.

With the same queenly beneficence she grants her husband, Melania has allowed the long-out-of-work director Brett Ratner (this is his first film since six women accused him of sexual assault in 2017) access to film her in tightly constrained snippets until the day after her return to the White House. It is 2025 and Trump will be sworn back into office as the 47th president of the U.S. in 20 days — or is it 13? One attempts to measure the passage of time in her outfit changes — a white jacket, shiny black leggings, a tight leather pencil skirt — although the exact numbers blur when Melania attempts to count them.

In terse, precise narration that provides most of our chances to hear her voice, Melania says that this will be a movie about “family, business, philanthropy and becoming first lady of the United States, again.” The latter, yes. Otherwise that proves to be a checklist of several things the movie scarcely touches on at all.

An intimate portrait, this is not. There’s no mention of how she and Trump fell in love and no words are exchanged with her stepchildren Ivanka, Tiffany, Eric and Donald Jr., not even to dispel rumors about their frosty relationship. Melania does gaze fondly at her son Barron on a couple of television screens and predicts he will grow up to have “ultimate success.” The only time I remember them speaking is a goodbye as he turns his back to lope down a hallway.

You become well-acquainted with her stiletto Louboutins and her silent, hunky blond bodyguard. We do witness insider White House events, like the five-hour window used to swap out all of Biden’s furniture for Trump’s, a breakneck turnaround accompanied by a panic of violins. As for witnessing emotions, though, Melania’s inexpressive voice-over assures us that her guarded surface contains deep empathy for humankind.

“Everyone should do what we can to protect our individual rights,” Melania says. “No matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.” Indeed, this isn’t a documentary — a black comedy, perhaps? In another scene, Melania silently watches news footage of the 2025 Los Angeles fires alone on a couch while informing us that it’s “impossible to see these images and not be devastated.” Bless her heart, she tries.

The first lady doesn’t mention politics other than to briefly say that it’s a shame so many people seem to wish her husband harm. Otherwise, she shares her precise opinions on every object she drinks from, sits on or wears. The opening finds her futzing over the neckline of her inauguration day blouse before telling the tailors to slice into the fabric with scissors. This outfit will be in a museum someday, she says. She’s not wrong, although the most compelling thing about that moment is witnessing how exceedingly agreeable everyone is in her orbit. One whispers, “I don’t think we can cut it, though,” once she glides out of the room.

“Melania” plays like a sizzle reel for her post-political (post-spousal?) future career in which she may rouse herself to be a guest judge on a reality competition show. She reminds us of her education in architecture and her Slovenia-to-Rome-to-Manhattan modeling path during which she gained confidence approving or disapproving of various fabrics, as well as the pride she took last term in renovating the Rose Garden (now paved) and decorating the East Wing (now demolished). Her dress designer fashions the closest thing the film has to a metaphor for Melania herself: a gown constructed with no visible seams. “A mystery,” he beams.

On camera, Melania barely talks to anyone besides her employees, a few of whom pick up on the Bravo Channel-style of the film and dutifully recite her opinions on her behalf, like when her event planner David Mann shows her the inauguration invitations and compliments them for being printed in “the color red … which you chose.” I experienced a secondhand childhood shiver of being prompted to write a thank-you note. (In fairness, Melania tells people “thank you” often.)

One of her helpers, who moved to the States from Laos at the age of 2, beams that her proximity to the first lady “really is the American dream.” Both women are immigrants, the film notes, although it doesn’t mention the Trump administration’s feelings about that. It’s worth noting that last year, the United States deported several hundred Laotian refugees back to their homeland, many of whom arrived here as toddlers after the Vietnam War. As for Slovenians, it deported three.

Halfway through “Melania’s” 104-minute running time, it occurred to me that it would feel scandalous if Ratner so much as taped her doing something as human and unguarded as eating a bite of food. Melania does, however, approve of Mann’s suggestion that she serve an appetizer of caviar-topped golden eggs. “White and gold is you,” he assures her, although — drama alert — she later admits that her favorite colors are actually white and black.

The other scintillating confession comes in the back of an SUV when Ratner drags it out of Melania that her favorite musician is Michael Jackson. He follows up that revelation by asking her to name her favorite song. “Billie Jean,” she replies. We’ve already heard that hit on the soundtrack, which also features needle drops by the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin and Elvis. (They must have gobbled up a portion of the film’s otherwise confounding price tag.) Someone also selected a piece from the score of “Phantom Thread,” the Paul Thomas Anderson drama about an underdog immigrant wife who poisons her much older spouse. Nevertheless, the unseen chauffeur cues “Billie Jean” again on the stereo. Melania lip syncs. It’s the film’s action spectacular. Documentary filmmakers are inquisitive and curious; they prefer real facts to alternative ones. Ratner, of course, earned Hollywood over $2 billion with his blockbusters about gunfire and exploding cars. He’s never made a documentary — and I agree with the first lady that he hasn’t made one now.

Still, I enjoyed several scenes exactly as they were: Melania hurrying to get off the phone with Trump when he starts boasting about his electoral college numbers (“It was a big win,” she assures him, smoothly), Melania nudging her husband to profess that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier,” Trump’s pique that his big day must battle for ratings against the college football championships. “We’ve had this date for hundreds of years,” Trump says with a huff. “They probably did it on purpose.”

As a kicker, “Melania” observes its central couple politely nodding goodnight after they come home from three inauguration balls, making it clear that the couple prefers separate bedrooms. Their marriage remains an enigma. Ratner captures lots of hand-holding, little connection. Reacting to the one-year anniversary of Melania’s mother’s death, her husband tells the camera, “This one had a hard time with that.” He sounds like he’s talking about an assistant challenged to bring him an ice-cold Diet Coke.

I cannot recommend “Melania” as a good movie or even an interesting one. It has the feel of a soothingly looped AI screen saver, a trance-inducing spell where nothing matters so long as your high heels aren’t hurting your feet. Yet against all odds, there is a truth in her SUV-to-tarmac-to-SUV-to-tarmac insularity. Future historians will be glad to have “Melania” as a lens into this moment in time. Like everything she touches, it’s a costly artifact.

‘Melania’

Rated: PG, for some thematic elements

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

Playing: In wide release Friday, Jan. 30

Related Articles

‘We will pay,’ Savannah Guthrie says in desperate video plea to potential kidnappers of her mother

Review: ‘Black and Jewish America’ compiles an illuminating history of intersection

Movie review: ‘Pillion’ an amusing, illuminating and daring kink-positive romance

Chappell Roan, FKA twigs and others embrace playful, daring fashion on Grammys red carpet

What to stream: ‘Nuremberg’ and more stories of justice

It’s always a good day when we can applaud award-winning St. Paul author Kao Kalia Yang’s two new children’s picture books, as well as spring books for young readers from local publisher Lerner Publications, and a heartfelt adult debut novel by a part-time St. Paulite.

(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)

“The Blue House I Loved”: by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Jen Shin (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95)

(Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group)

“A Home on the Page”: by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Seo Kim (CarolRhoda Books, $18.99)

Kao Kalia Yang (Shee Yang / University of Minnesota Press)

Yang, winner of seven Minnesota Book Awards for children and adults, forms “The Blue House I Loved” as memories of a Hmong woman recalling the time her family lived with her aunt and uncle in St. Paul when they were newly arrived from a refugee camp in Thailand.

“On the plot of grass off Maryland Avenue, behind a bar on Payne Avenue, on the east side of St. Paul, there was once a blue house that I loved,” the story begins.

Room by room, the author takes us through the house, now long gone. Although it was “a two-story, built in the late 1800s, a farmhouse with a damp basement,” it was filled with happy kids in an extended family. The author’s two boy cousins slept in a porch so cold their hair was frozen in the morning. The kids ate in the dark living room, and in a bedroom her older girl cousins played cassette tapes of Thai and Chinese singers. In the kitchen, her aunt and mother prepared pickled mustard greens. Outside, the family stood on a slab of concrete to welcome home an uncle who had surgery.

“We children didn’t know then that our lives would take us far from each other, and that love spread far too thin across time and space grows faint like dreams,” she writes. “Yet each time I pass by this plot of grass, behind Payne and off Maryland, I feel ghosts in that house, inviting us toward the past, to ourselves and each other, again.”

Yang writes for all ages, drawing inspiration from her experiences as a refugee. Among her Minnesota Book Award-winning picture books are “The Rock in My Throat” and “The Diamond Explorer.” American Library Association awards went to “A Map Into the World,” “The Most Beautiful Thing” and “From the Tops of the Trees.”

“The Blue House I Loved” received a starred review from Boolklist as well as praise from Kirkus Reviews. Critics give props to Jen Shin’s detailed, meticulous three-dimensional architectural renditions of the house.

Yang will launch her book with a free reading at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Arlington Hills Library, 1200 Payne Ave., in the neighborhood that inspired her story.

Yang’s other new book, “A Home on the Page,” confronts racism in a story about a young Hmong American girl who finds a racist slur painted on her family’s mailbox. She tells her parents she wants to leave, but they explain about the ways they find comfort and belonging. She discovers her father’s home is in the songs he performs and her mother’s home is in her garden. The girl begins writing stories and soon she has found her home — on the page.

And from Lerner

“Bird! In Spring”/”Bird! in Summer”: by Raymond McGrath ($12.99) — Bird is out on his own and and has to find a tree to make his nest, which he does season by season and friend by friend. Second in a four-book series of early reader graphic novels about independence, kindness and the beauty of our differences.

“Let’s Camp!”: by Shelley Rotner ($10.99) — This slim paperback gives advice on setting up camp and sleeping in a tent, camping etiquette and the fun of hiking, fishing and biking.

“Who Will Rule the Trees?”: by Eric A. Kimmel, illustrated by Alette Straathof ($19.99)

Every kind of tree asks God to be trees’ ruler. Oak, pine, maple, fig, date palm make their case by touting their strengths. But one tree reveals something none of the others can offer.

Middle-grade fiction

“Choir GRRRL”: by Ashley Granillo ($19.99) — A 13-year-old girl’s father wants her to follow in his footsteps with band music but she wants to sing in a choir without making her dad angry. Will she have to choose between two kinds of music?

“Wild Mountain Ivy”: by Shannon Hitchcock ($18.99) — A girl recovering from a virus spends the summer in an old house in the Blue Ridge Mountains where she dreams of a girl who lived there a century earlier when it was a tuberculosis facility. Delving into the history of the place, she finds changes in her own life.

(Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group)

“Rules for Liars”: by Debra Garfinkle and April Patten ($18.99) — Rebecca and Nikki are facing life’s challenges, Rebecca is overwhelmed with preparing for her bat mitzvah while grieving for her mother. Nikki’s family has lost their home and she lies to her friends about their circumstances. Together, the girls face their grief, guilt and personal struggles.

“The Wolf in Underpants Moves On”: by Wilfrid Lupano, illustrated by Maryana Itoiz ($8.99) — In the seventh in this graphic novel series, the wolf’s fearsome reputation has other forest animal running, until the wolf shows up in a pair of comfy striped pair of underpants. Then he goes off to Elsewhere, wherever that may be.

(Lake Union Publishing)

“Loon Point”: by Carrie Classon (Lake Union Publishing, $16.99).

If everything around you seems bleak in these days of grayness and turmoil, read this uplifting, soul-satisfying debut novel by a St. Paul native and nationally syndicated columnist with Andres McMeel Universal about what it means to gather a family.

Norry Last has been running her family’s business, the Last Resort, since her father died 10 years earlier. After her husband left her, she’s happy at the northern Minnesota resort that is popular with summer visitors. Then, in the middle of a fierce snowstorm, a skinny little girl and her dog show up at the resort. Lizzie has walked in the storm from a crummy trailer she lives in with her drug-addicted mother. Norry knows nothing about children but she takes in Lizzie and the dog, Mr. Benson, and learns to care for the smart, polite third-grader who loves books, especially “Little House in the Big Woods.”

The cast includes Bud, a snowplow driver, a volunteer fireman and a big man who just can’t help giving a hand to everyone who needs one. Bud and Norry have known one another since high school and Bud can’t stop making jokes about the “Last” resort and Norry’s name. And there is Wendell, a 70-something man whose life Bud saves when Wendell’s hoard-filled old house literally falls in and nearly kills him. Wendell is a man who never reached out to do much and blames the world for it. He believes most people are idiots and only a few realize, as he does, that the world is dark, lonely and rigged against them. His life is “one long hesitation” and he’s thinking of ways to kill himself, except busybodies like Bud and the woman next door keep getting in the way. Could a little notebook with a glittery unicorn on the cover save him?

What’s so sweet about this story is the way this disparate group comes together to create family. Norry grows to love Lizzy, who’s often scared for her mother but loves living at the resort. Wendell, sitting by a shoreside fire roasting marshmallows, is surprised anyone pays attention to him. Bud doesn’t change, because he doesn’t need to; he’s just fine the way he is and Norry begins to realize that.

There is a sort of glow over this story, maybe because all the characters are doing the best they can, even Lizzie’s addicted mother. There are no villains here.

Classon is also a performer who had a 14-year career in theater performing in dozens of shows across the country. After founding and running a professional theater, she worked in international business. She holds an MFA from the University of New Mexico and has written a memoir, several plays and more than 600 columns. With her husband, Peter, she divides her time between St. Paul and Mexico. (Norry’s best friend in the novel lives during the winter in Mexico, from which she gives Norry advice.)

Teaser quote: “It was true, what she’d said to Virgie. Showing Lizzie things she had taken for granted has forced Norry to see them in a new way. When she saw the first marsh marigolds blooming along the shore, she found herself thinking she’d have to show the bright-yellow flowers to Lizzie. She thought she should get the pontoon out earlier than usual and take a spin around the lake with Lizzie. She wondered if Lizzie would like to go fishing with Bud — once the northern season started. She imagined taking Lizzie to pick raspberries — until she remember that no, Lizzie would be gone by then.”

Related Articles

Literary calendar for week of Feb. 8

What’s like got to do with it? Sara Levine on the art of ‘difficult’ women

Broadway and Hollywood songwriter Marc Shaiman looks back with pessimistic humor in memoir

Literary calendar for week of Feb. 1

Readers and writers: An eye-opening read of people who are homeless, plus fiction and history

GALENTINE’S NIGHT OUT: A celebration of connection, creativity and community with curated vendors, small bites and drinks and a chance to mingle with authors Susanna Daniel, Megan Giddings, Curtis Sittenfeld, Amanda Uhle, Kathleen West and Erin White. Presented by Literature Lover’s Night Out and ModernWell. $20. 6 p.m. Wednesday, ModernWell, 2909 S. Wayzata Blvd., Mpls. (Galentine is a “holiday” invented by a character on the TV series “Parks & Recreation”).

MIDSTREAM READING SERIES: With original poetry by KateLynn Hubbard, Ronald J. Palmer, Roslye Ultan and Caleb Tankersley. Hosted by Paul Mattes. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Unity Church-Unitarian, 732 Holly Ave., St. Paul.

MELISSA FAVILENO: North Carolina-based author presents “Hemlock,” her Gothic debut novel, in conversation with Megan Giddings. 7 p.m. Monday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

PATRICK HICKS: Discusses “Greater Minnesota: Exploring the Land of Sky-Blue Waters.” 7 p.m. Thursday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

(Courtesy of Ballantine Books)

KAREN PARKMAN: St. Paul author launches her debut thriller “The Jills,” about a Buffalo Bills cheerleader with a tangled family history  who must solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate in a hardscrabble city. In conversation with local author Alice Bolin (“Culture Creep”). 6 p.m. Tuesday, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

JOSEPH G. PETERSON: Chicago-based novelist introduces “The Perturbation of O,” a comic story about a loser  who becomes a winner with the publication of his memoir and the chaotic aftermath. Free. 7 p.m. Tuesday, University Club, 420 Summit Ave., St. Paul.

TRANSLATION EVENING: With Ed Bok Lee, Robert Hedin and Kaija Straumanis in conversation, presented by Rain Taxi Review. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

JASMINE WARGA: Bestselling author on tour introduces her new book “The Claiming: The Last Resort # 2” in conversation with fellow a middle-grade author, Minnesotan Anne Ursu. In Warga’s fictional world, ghosts come to life and help solve a mystery. Free, but registration is helpful. Go to redballoonbookshop.org/events. 6 p.m. Monday, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.

FRANK WEBER: Minnesota forensic psychologist and true-crime writer introduces his new book “Heartbreak Hollow” during Valentine’s Day Romance Author fair along with other local writers. Noon-8 p.m. Saturday,  Inbound Brewing, 701 N. Fifth St., Mpls.

What else is going on

(Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group)

Congratulations to Minneapolis-based Lerner Publishing for winning multiple awards at the American Library Association Youth Media Awards at the ALA’s conference in Chicago in late January. “The Library in the Woods” by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, won the Coretta Scott King illustrator award and was named a Coretta Scott King author Honor book. Other winners: “The Pecan Sheller” by Lupe Ruiz-Flores; “Kaho’Olawe,” Kamalani Hurley, illustrated by Harinani Orme; “The Red Car to Hollywood,” Jennie Lu;  “Sometimes the Girl,” Jennifer Mason Black; “I’m a Dumbo Octopus,” Anne Lambelet; “Clack, Clack! Smack!,” Live Oak Media (audio). If the ALA gives a book an award, you can be sure it’s worth reading. Remember, librarians are on the front lines of fighting for our right to read.

Award-winning Minnesota writers Jess Lourey and Kristi Belcamino (a Pioneer Press employee) are organizing Authors for Minnesota Day on Feb. 28 from noon to 4 p.m. at a venue to be announced. They report great response (of course) from authors  Lorna Landvik, Matt Goldman, Wendy Webb, William Souder and William Kent Krueger. Sounds like a great event. Stay tuned.

Related Articles

What’s like got to do with it? Sara Levine on the art of ‘difficult’ women

Broadway and Hollywood songwriter Marc Shaiman looks back with pessimistic humor in memoir

Literary calendar for week of Feb. 1

Readers and writers: An eye-opening read of people who are homeless, plus fiction and history

Shelley Read’s debut novel ‘Go as a River’ becomes a global sensation

From protest signs to posters in shop windows to apparel, artists across St. Paul and the greater Twin Cities are responding to the federal immigration enforcement crackdown with a surge of creativity.

In the days after immigration agents shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, live painter Noval Noir created a large-scale portrait of Good at the site.

“Art is a way to heal, and energy attracts other people, so that was my light to give back to the community,” Noir told local radio personality Sheletta Brundidge on her radio show in mid-January. “Art speaks language that words can’t. When you’re giving someone a visual, you get to change a narrative.”

And artwork that responds to and reflects social movements can be a tangible community-building force itself, artists say.

“Through grassroots organizing, we’ve always seen that art is a means of resistance,” said Chenda Hing, a digital organizer for Minnesota 8, a St. Paul-based advocacy group that works within the Southeast Asian community. “For me, as someone who really values storytelling as a way for people to understand and be moved, storytelling through visual art can really resonate and poke and prod at some feelings — and actually generate power within the people,” Hing said.

Hing and four other artists created T-shirt designs for MN8’s Deportation Defense & Relief Fundraiser, launched as the organization has seen a more-than-600 percent spike in its caseload as federal agents have targeted Southeast Asian immigrants, especially in St. Paul, Hing said.

Hing’s design depicts a yeak, a giant-like figure in Cambodian folklore, keeping a family safe from an ICE vehicle, along with the text “We Protect Each Other.” The design, Hing said, intentionally inverts the traditional characterization of the yeak as an antagonistic or even demonic force.

“I’m doing a retelling of it where it’s a misunderstood giant that is actually protecting our community members from the real evil, which is ICE,” Hing said. “My point on this in this piece was thinking about the criminalization narrative of immigrants. Trump is labeling immigrants that he’s detaining as the ‘worst of the worst’ and people who are totally harassing and disrupting this community, when, in my drawing, I wanted to portray that that is not our narrative at all.”

Across the Twin Cities, other artists, like muralist Audrey Carver and printmaker Sean Lim, have hosted pop-up events to disseminate artwork and raise money for community organizations. At a bring-your-own-shirt printing event Carver hosted at Wandering Leaf Brewing in Highland Park in mid-January, she printed more than 300 shirts and raised over $5,000, she announced on Instagram.

During upcoming community printing events Feb. 5 and 6, a design by St. Paul Indigenous artist Marlena Myles reading “ICE Out of Mni Sóta Makóče / No One is Illegal on Stolen Land” will be available to print on a shirt or tote bag you bring. The event runs 2 to 6:30 p.m. both days at the Minneapolis American Indian Center; 1530 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis.

Liz Derby, who runs the studio Little Dipper Art, has created a suite of “ICE out” posters inspired by local landmarks and wintertime imagery that are available at a quickly growing list of dozens of Twin Cities shops including, in St. Paul, Wildflyer Coffee, Next Chapter Booksellers, I Like You Too, Center for Lost Objects and SK Coffee.

Others still are releasing designs free online. Minneapolis design studio Burlesque of North America created a design riffing off the ubiquitous red-and-white snow emergency sign, a twist that’s earned national media coverage. The studio itself has printed more than 5,000 copies to donate and has uploaded free PDFs to its website.

Countless other artists — including snow sculptors at the World Snow Sculpting Championship in downtown Stillwater and the Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition at the Vulcan Snow Park at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds — are also using their skills to highlight and push back against what they see as unjustifiably violent immigration enforcement actions such as the shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“It’s been inspiring to see all of these different illustrators and artists and designers putting the same sentiment out there, the same kind of general feel, but in vastly different ways,” said Alxndr Jones, a St. Paul-based artist. “Some more intense, some more lighthearted, some more loving, some more angry. It just speaks so much to the creative community that there is in the Twin Cities.”

Jones’s own art is known for his distinctive gestural style he described as inspired by jazz album covers, punk rock aesthetics and the American traditional style of tattoo art. He, too, is offering some designs for free download on his website and selling prints to raise money for nonprofits.

One print, riffing off the Morton Salt mascot, depicts a person in a yellow coat dropping salt behind them and holding a sign reading “Abolish ICE” or, in another version, replacing the first word with a common expletive. In another design collection, a diving loon holds a banner reading, variously, “Protect Our Community” or “We Fight Together.”

“After the murder of Renee Good, I couldn’t pick up a pencil without drawing something that was anti-ICE, was protest,” Jones said. “We’re in a world where it feels like there’s so much we need to do, but at the same time, it’s like, what can I do? I don’t know what to do, but I do know how to draw and how to make an image that might resonate with somebody.”

The power of art to drive fundraising efforts, empower protesters to action, share cultural stories and connect with like-minded neighbors cannot be overstated, Hing said. But also? It can just be nice to look at. And that counts for a lot, too.

“When crisis hits, when we are feeling at our most down, art is really a source of joy for us all that we can really connect with,” Hing said. “Art is just so beautiful, and our people really deserve beautiful things at this moment.”

Related Articles

Appeals court affirms Trump policy of jailing immigrants without bond

Protesters arrested outside Whipple federal building on 1-month anniversary of Renee Good’s death

Prosecutors began investigating Renee Good’s killing. Washington told them to stop.

Immigrant whose skull was broken in 8 places during ICE arrest in St. Paul says beating was unprovoked

Judge orders Trump administration to bring back 3 families deported to Honduras, other countries