Keynote address for the Munich Opera Festival

I want to thank everyone at the Munich Opera Festival for inviting me here to speak with you, distinguished guests and friends, this evening. I'd like to especially thank General Director Serge Dorny.

It is such a wonderful honor to be standing here, in this magnificent, historic opera house, which has experienced so many important moments within the history of opera, theater, and ballet. My first time experiencing the opera in Munich was through an invitation by my friend and art dealer Ileana Sonnabend. During her lifetime, Ileana was very passionate about the opera, and every summer she would travel to Munich to experience the performances.

I have always loved German culture. I've always been attracted to the German people's involvement with their own culture, their openness to the arts, and deep awareness of their environment.

To be here today, to be within the hallowed halls of the Prinzregententheater, is incredibly inspiring. When I think back on my own journey through the arts, I reflect on the joy that understanding and becoming has brought into my life. I was brought up in York, Pennsylvania, in the United States, where there is a large German population, and from a young age I was pulled closely to certain intellectual and physical aspects of German culture. One example of this would be the gazing ball. Gazing balls were created in Venice in the 13^th century and were eventually re-popularized in 19^th century Germany by King Ludwig II. For me, the gazing ball, a lawn ornament, represents extreme generosity because of its reflectivity, which informs you, the viewer, of where you are at that moment in the universe. Already in my childhood, from just walking around my neighborhood, I was experiencing an aspect of German culture, which to this day I hold in profound meaning.

Throughout my childhood, I developed a sense of self through the arts. My parents were very supportive of my interest in art and provided that I had private art lessons. When I was in first grade, I learned that you could overcome obstacles through the arts. My art teacher, Mrs. Miller, had only one hand. By her example, I learned that you could overcome any obstacle in life. I was always in the art class in high school, and when it became time for me to go to college, I felt that the only thing I was really prepared for was to go to art school.

I ended up going to art school in Baltimore, Maryland. I had my first art history lesson on my first day of college, and it was a moment that changed my life. My art history teacher brought up an image of Manet’s Olympia on the screen, and started to speak about how, in 19th-century France, the black cat in the lower right corner of the painting would be a symbol for Olympia’s promiscuity. Or, how the woman presenting Olympia with a bouquet of flowers implies that the subject is a courtesan. Or also, that the provocative position of Olympia, lying down and directing her gaze at the viewer, is referencing Goya's Maja.

At that moment, I felt like the luckiest person in the room, because I realized that art is a vehicle which unites so effortlessly all the human disciplines. I could be involved in philosophy, psychology, sociology, theology, aesthetics, the sciences, all human disciplines, and to this day I never wake up without feeling that same excitement for life and feeling the power that art is able to bring into our lives each and every day.

Before this art history lesson, art was an activity that generated anxiety. I had previously looked at art as an activity that was to be performed. I thought that there were certain rules that I had to learn and follow, that art was about being able to master different techniques and requirements. But after that moment, I understood art as a vehicle that connects us to all human knowledge.

Over the years, I realized that art could bring enlightenment and encourage each and every one of us to explore our interests, to become vaster human beings. I realized that what was most important to me was the power of acceptance, to be able to see everything as perfect in its own being, and the removal of judgment and hierarchy. When we are brought up to believe in hierarchy, everything becomes something which you must have a certain knowledge of to even participate, and hierarchy can lead to a desire for culture only for the sake of refinement. As soon as you're practicing acceptance, all hierarchy is removed.

To get to this position, I had to truly accept myself, although I was aware of my flaws as a human being. As soon as you truly accept yourself, you have the confidence and the curiosity to open yourself up to the world. The last place you want to be is just within yourself, and automatically you begin to open up, like the opening of a clam shell. Everything in the external world becomes source material to be used, incorporated in some manner for your empowerment. By practicing self-acceptance, you remove any guilt and shame that you may have, and therefore can open up to accept everything as perfect in its own being. This empowerment is here for all of us. You never have to bring anything to art other than yourself at that moment.

Everything around us, everywhere we look, is culture. We could observe any object, texture, or image within this room, and everything is already there and participating at the same level of relevance. There are certain moments in our life where we may feel something to be slightly more significant, but that doesn't mean that it contains any less relevance within its own being. When we remove judgement and hierarchy, we open ourselves up to see and experience all of the surrounding culture.

I am very proud to say that for a period of time, from the mid-80s to the early 90s, I spent much of my time living here in Munich. I was using the city as my home base, working and overseeing the development of my artworks being made by artisans from the surrounding area.

I was trying to draw on the energy of Munich in a similar manner to Marcel Duchamp. When Duchamp came to Munich and visited the Bavarian Industrial Fair, he was inspired by all the industrial objects within the fair. This experience led him to contextualize the idea of the ready-made. I too was captivated and seduced by the cultural dialogue of the city.

It would have been from walking the streets of Munich, going into the residences beside the opera, going into the shops and souvenir stores within the city, and later, working with and seeing works by the craftsmen of Southern Bavaria and Northern Italy, that I was able to pull together the concept and vision for my Banality series. I found that the artworks of the series came together so intuitively and effortlessly within this environment. I was able to experience complete acceptance, and by ridding myself of judgement, I found empowerment.

I conceived of pieces like Ushering in Banality, Winter Bears, Pink Panther, and Amore. These artworks had a spiritual and sensual quality, some through a living material and others from being made in porcelain. Both gave a feeling of extreme accessibility. Traditionally, in southern Bavarian churches, you will find statuary of saints, angels, and decorative architectural elements that are carved in wood, which I incorporated aspects of into my work. The German people have continued the polychroming tradition from the ancient times through the Medieval and Baroque, and into the present, because of the mystical dialogue that is created between the animate and the inanimate.

I was trying to capture within my artworks the German tradition of embedding the spiritual within the sensual, incorporating passions and pleasures within the works. To be physically involved with nature is to touch on the spiritual aspects of life.

German art, architecture, and landscape show an understanding of the relevance of culture within everyday life, from modest farmhouses to castles in the Bavarian alps that resemble incredible Wagnerian worlds. You can have the experience of swimming in a lake and simultaneously witness the splendor of snow-capped mountains. The majesty of the natural environment provides the setting for feeling and sensation.

In a way, I am always experiencing my own Wagnerian moments. While working in Bavaria, I remember seeing cows with flowers and very large decorative bells around their necks. It was a celebration of the fertility of nature, and at the same time, the passions and the prospect of the human being that is aware of their surroundings and awakened to their desires.

Culture never asks anything of us, because it is simply our involvement with the world. Life consists of our interactions with our environment. To view this at the most simple level, we are here breathing. When we inhale, we're pulling oxygen, or the external environment, into us, and when we exhale, we're releasing carbon dioxide into the environment, and we are chemically changing the environment. That is culture, and it is through this activity, this back and forth over time, that we continue to become. It’s not about hierarchy; it is about becoming the most we can become.

At one time, I had the pleasure to meet Eric Betzig, the winner of a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, during Nobel Laureate Week in Stockholm. I was fortunate to have a conversation with him, and during that conversation he told me: Life is an illusion. It is only an animated chemical chain reaction. That was the first time that I had ever heard this idea and I was really overwhelmed by it. I was already familiar with Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, but in understanding of our biology and what really makes us human beings, everything hinges right on the next moment. It's like if we think of ourselves as an animated cartoon, it's that next frame, that next chemical reaction to take place, that creates the excitement for what may happen. This is feeling, the essence of life.

Over history, we've developed different iconographies and vocabularies to attempt to define experience. We have sought to intensify experience and to embed meaning into the gestures that we make within our world.

Art has this profound ability to allow us to connect ourselves to our cultural and biological history. When we experience the opera, theater, or ballet, we are experiencing history, and this very moment, at the same time. We are stimulated by similar sights and sensations that audiences from the past experienced in their own time, yet the opera always metamorphosizes itself to respond to the moment. It translates its original story, its original stimuli, into the language of the present moment in history. It is so powerful because, even though the vocalists, musicians, scenes, and orchestra, even down to the instruments themselves, usually change with each revival, there is always an underlying character, a structure that remains the same, pulling the audience into a narrative that endures across time.

King Ludwig II, empowered by his love of Richard Wagner’s creations, sought out and established a relationship with the composer. Through the support given to Wagner by King Ludwig II, Wagner was able to create such works as the The Ring cycle the second part of which, The Valkyrie, is a major highlight of the 2026 Munich Opera Festival.

Another wonderful example is the pure, joyful experience of Die Fledermaus, the operetta that ended last year’s season. On New Year's Eve, I brought my entire family to Munich to see the opera, and it was such an uplifting experience of absolute extravagance and of pure pleasure with its belligerence, its playfulness, and its celebration of life. It’s as if the power of life explodes outward at some moments, the noise, the crackle, the pop, all of our sensations being heightened.

Opera is a very special art form that we are fortunate to be experiencing each night throughout this festival. In the coming weeks, Munich will experience a dynamic where powerful feelings, emotions, and the essence of possibility become available to us. I believe that the power of arts and culture that we're going to observe throughout the 2026 festival, through opera, music, and ballet, will be life changing, if only we open ourselves up to experience it.

What we have the fortune to witness during this year’s Munich Opera Festival are remarkable productions such as Wagner's The Valkyrie, Georg Friedrich Handel’s Alcina, Brett Dean’s Of One Blood, and the Konstellationen ballet premiere, with all of the sounds, harmonies, voice, visuals and emotions that these forms of narrative storytelling can affect.