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THE
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robert atkins
AUTHOR | ART CRITIC | EDUCATOR
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ROBERT ATKINS is an award-winning art historian, journalist, curator and activist. A former columnist for the Village Voice, he is the co-author of Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression. A founder of Visual AIDS—the producers of “Day With(out) Art” and the “Red Ribbon”—he also co-curated From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, the first international traveling exhibition of AIDS-art. [Click HERE for full bio.]
MORE BOOKS BY ROBERT ATKINS
Click on each cover to learn more.
Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression
ArtSpeak : A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present
ArtSpoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1848-1944
From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS
UPCOMING EVENTS
THE ORWELL PROJECT
The George Orwell Project (or TOP) pays homage to the English author of the controversial novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, published immediately after World War II. His fearsome, prophetic-seeming social criticism and anti-totalitarianism evoked a world of constant surveillance and censorship embodied in doublespeak. Frequently barred from public school libraries in the US, Nineteen Eighty-Four is now revered as Best Classic Fiction in the Prometheus Hall of Fame, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels, and Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels.
PRESS & REVIEWS
“Written mostly as the AIDS crisis crested, Atkins’ collected essays bring us directly to the specificity of the AIDS experience: The profound integration of ART, the Art World, and the political crisis. The deeply personal details of dying, surviving, and witnessing. Atkins’ work eclipses subsequent cliches and makes the reader see the visual life of this disaster, resisting its waning memory.”
Sarah Schulman, activist and author
“AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War is an IMPORTANT and NECESSARY book. Robert Atkins’ writing in the Village Voice defines an urgent and turbulent time during the 1980’s and 1990’s. But his writing chronicles more than history: It foretells the current culture war battles about free expression and censorship raging across the planet.”
Antonio Muntadas, artist
“Unapologetically partisan, passionately engaged and deeply immersed in a long history of activism, Atkins’ collection of essays cannot be more timely. There are frequent comparisons between the ideological climate today and the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, yet the political evolution of censorship in the last 40 years needed to be traced—until now. This book brings to life the main actors, the political manipulations, and the creative resistance."
Svetlana Mintcheva, writer
“The worldwide HIV pandemic is obviously not over. Memory, history and heart must be mobilized to eradicate AIDS. This book, loaded with all three, is a potent weapon.”
Jeff Weinstein, former art editor Village Voice
“Critic, activist, and historian, Robert Atkins’ bulletins from the culture war front remind us of the deep roots of our current social estrangement. His pointed prose illuminates the strategically-provoked prejudices that have hoodwinked so many. Looking at the actions of artists and cultural groups to push back, this book suggests ways forward that honor our progressive past.”
Steven Watson, cultural historian
“Anyone seeking to understand America’s culture war would be hard-pressed to find a clearer, more compelling account of its development in the racist/homophobic attacks on freedom of expression in the 1980s,that laid the groundwork for contemporary assaults on nearly every form of constitutionally protected expression.. “
David M. Roth, former editor and publisher of SquareCylinder
"According to James Baldwin, ideas re-emerge when they are needed. Robert Atkins has written a book that examines the AIDS crisis of the 1980-90s—and provides strategies that may be relevant again in the present. Thank you, Robert, for staying in the trenches, fighting the good fight for freedom of expression then, and effective means of preserving our freedoms now."
Martha Wilson, Artist, Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Archive
"Atkins traces a through-line from the little known19th century Kulturkampf to JD Vance’s recent claim that Christian nationalism “remains America’s creed,” reminding us of stupidity's current triumph... Despite this strangling of intellectual inquiry and free expression, Atkins' book offers hope. It affirms that art’s exchange of ideas and community building is our path forward, the primary vehicle for human adaptation."
Gordon Knox , Arizona State University Art
Museum
"Robert Atkins’ granular account of the suffering and the censorship that occurred during a time of crisis and destruction should be required reading for anyone interested in American culture."
Cynthia Carr, author of Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar
© 2026 by Robert Atkins. Created on Wix Studio.