| Good morning. For a new perspective on animated film, begin your day with Ari Richter’s moving comic on the unlikely works of art that helped him process familial stories of the Holocaust as a child: the movies of Steven Spielberg. Meanwhile, in the news, Trump directs National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Shelly C. Lowe, the first Native person to hold the position, to step down. Read our report on her dismissal and what it signals for the already-precarious future of arts and culture funding in the US. And as the grim news cycle churns on, now is a particularly good time to read Alex Paik’s piece on sculptures by artist Kelly Akashi. After the LA wildfires destroyed her studio in January, she leaned on her community to muster the strength to pull charred materials from the ashes, transforming them into something new. More to sustain and nourish you below, including artists’ love letters to their studios in A View From the Easel, the Ruth Asawa show coming up in San Francisco, and big news for dog and cat people alike in this week’s Required Reading. — Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Associate Editor | 
