Dorothy Vogel died in November. Her obituary was short — an elderly woman, a retired librarian — but the life behind it was monumental. She and her husband Herb, a postal clerk, built one of the most important collections of contemporary art on two modest salaries. And then they gave it all away.

I’ve been thinking about what makes art possible — not just the making of it, but the conditions that allow it to exist. When I studied contact improvisation with Steve Paxton at Bennington and later danced with Trisha Brown in New Mexico, I learned that trust wasn’t an abstract concept; it was physical. You lean into another person and discover that their balance supports your own. That same principle — that generosity sustains creation — runs through the story of Judson Church, Black Mountain College, and the Chelsea Hotel. Each was a kind of living experiment in mutual reliance. This post explores how those places turned community into a medium, proving that art and generosity have always been intertwined.