American Culture Is A Mess (And We Love It)
The 10th annual COA Summer Institute welcomes Jia Tolentino, staff writer at the New Yorker, in conversation with A.O. Scott, critic at large for The New York Times Book Review.
As two of the most incisive cultural critics writing today, Tolentino and Scott have spent their careers examining how Americans make meaning through media, art, technology, and everyday life. In a moment when culture can feel fragmented, contested, and constantly shifting, they explore the idea that this disorder may be less a problem to solve than a condition to understand.
Together, they consider whether a shared cultural center ever truly existed, and what might be gained, as well as lost, in its absence. Rather than seeking tidy narratives, they embrace the friction, contradiction, and multiplicity that shape American culture. They also look ahead, asking how these forces might continue to evolve, what new forms of cultural expression may emerge, and what kind of shared understanding, if any, might still be possible.
The 2026 Summer Institute: Toward a More Perfect Union will mark the country’s 250th anniversary with a forward-looking series of conversations about the future of the American experiment. By late July, we anticipate that audiences will have encountered plenty of historical retrospectives and the predictable swing between overly patriotic and overly critical narratives. Our goal is different: To convene voices from across American culture—journalism, the arts, science, philanthropy, civic life, and beyond—and explore how the nation’s founding values have been, and continue to be, tested, reshaped, and reimagined. The Institute asks how these ideals can be stewarded, strengthened, and carried into the future.