On his first day back from winter break, Dawrin Mota leaves the Las Vegas charter school where he works as a literacy strategist and heads to his second job cleaning houses. 

The side business he and his wife operate keeps cash flowing in to support discretionary spending. On this January evening, his wife cleans one house solo, they do two together, and they hire people to clean two more. It yields them about $350.

That kind of extra money was especially helpful during last month’s costly holiday season.

“If I didn’t have it, I don’t know that I’d be able to really get my kids anything, honestly,” Mr. Mota says.

For decades, teachers have lamented lackluster pay – giving way to promises and debates on the campaign trail, in state legislatures, and in the hallways of Congress. Pockets of success have emerged along the way. Last year, governors from Florida to New Mexico worked with state legislatures to increase teacher salaries.

Then, in the waning days of the last session of Congress, the conversation took a new turn: A teacher-turned-congresswoman, Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat from Florida, introduced the American Teacher Act.

Designed as a four-year federal grant program, the bill, set to be reintroduced in Congress on Wednesday, would help states lift their starting teacher salaries to $60,000, boost pay for veteran teachers, and make cost-of-living adjustments tied to inflation.  

The proposal, which faces an uphill battle, has nonetheless renewed longstanding questions that have simmered and, occasionally, boiled over into protests and strikes: What’s a fair salary for teachers? And can educators and advocates get lawmakers on board with higher wages?

As states grapple with teacher shortages and fewer people entering the field, compensation often rises to the top of the concern list.

“It’s the No. 1 issue,” says Sanford Johnson, executive director of Teach Plus Mississippi, a branch of the national, policy-focused organization. “In the conversations that we have with teachers and the conversations we have with people who, you know, are aspiring teachers, a lot of teachers have said that they no longer see the profession as being something that’s sustainable.”

Lynne Sladky/AP/File

Rep. Frederica Wilson listens during a presentation about sea level rise, June 28, 2022, in Miami. The congresswoman, a Democrat and former teacher from Florida, plans to reintroduced the American Teacher Act on Jan. 25, 2023. The bill would offer a path to higher salaries for educators.

A starting point: $60,000

New teachers entering the workforce earned an average starting salary of $41,770 during the 2020-2021 academic year, according to the National Education Association. The union pegged the average salary for public school teachers – regardless of experience – at $65,293 that same year.

The baseline pay proposed by Representative Wilson’s bill represents a substantial increase over the typical starting salary, but she believes it’s a figure that could garner bipartisan support, says Karol Molinares, a spokesperson for Ms. Wilson. 

“The congresswoman likes to say that, you know, this isn’t a ceiling – it’s a floor,” Ms. Molinares says, describing the selection of $60,000. 

Representative Wilson plans to refile the bill – the first of its kind at the federal level – with the 118th Congress on Jan. 25. Already, the bill has more than 60 endorsements, including from both major teacher unions, the National PTA, and two former education secretaries, Arne Duncan and John B. King, Jr. 

All public school teachers, including those who work in charter schools that receive public funding, would be eligible for the salary bump, Ms. Molinares says. The original bill targets the 2024-’25 academic year as the start date.

Even though Representative Wilson and the original bill’s eight co-sponsors are Democrats, advocates say they see opportunity for Republican support, given teacher shortages and broad public backing for boosting educator income. 

Researchers from Kansas State University and the University of Illinois-Champaign published a report in August estimating that at least 36,500 teaching vacancies exist across the nation, representing nearly 1.7% of positions. On top of that, 163,000 people without proper licensure are helping fill those positions.

That means potentially millions of students don’t have a qualified teacher leading their classroom each day – a problem some experts are concerned could worsen over the coming years.

Gene Johnson/AP

Picketing teachers and staff break for lunch outside Northgate Elementary School in Seattle on the third day of a strike by the Seattle Education Association on Sept. 9, 2022. Recent strikes, such as this one, often include debate over pay.

Mississippi, long on the low end of teacher pay scales, was one of the states that started increasing pay last year. Magnolia State lawmakers passed a bill – signed by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves – that gave teachers an average increase of $5,100 and implemented pay increases throughout a teacher’s career. It also bumped starting teacher pay to $41,500, up from $37,000.

Mr. Johnson says his Teach Plus Mississippi and other advocacy organizations and allies leaned on educators’ personal stories to help their cause. Teachers submitted written testimony to the Legislature and started a social media campaign to share their experiences.

Among them was Crystal Jackson, a special education teacher in the Vicksburg Warren School District, near the state’s western border with Louisiana. She moonlights as a bartender and waitress once or twice a week. Many of her co-workers also hold second jobs, she says, whether at a brick-and-mortar business or through a gig economy opportunity such as DoorDash.

Ms. Jackson credits the awareness campaign, especially on social media, with moving state lawmakers to action.

“I think the more voices you have speaking out about something and the more attention you have within the state, the more it just becomes like, ‘Oh, we have to do this,’” she says.

The raise brought her annual salary to roughly $50,000, which she describes as a more livable wage. She no longer works her second job every weekend.

Ms. Jackson, who has a master’s degree, says she is thankful for the increase. But when asked what she considers a fair wage for teachers, she hesitates. This is the most she has ever made. 

“I don’t think we value teachers as much as we say we do because they’re still among some of our lowest-paid professionals that we see in the workforce throughout the U.S.,” she says.

A report from the Economic Policy Institute backs up her assertion. Depending on where they live, teachers in the United States earn a weekly wage that is 3.4% to 35.9% less than that of their college-educated peers. In 28 states, that figure – known as a wage penalty – exceeds 20%. Benefits somewhat offset that pay reality, but not enough to level the playing field. The report found that teachers’ total compensation penalty grew by 11.5 percentage points from 1993 to 2021.

“Is this possible?” 

Despite the celebratory atmosphere surrounding the Mississippi pay raises last year, Mr. Johnson takes a pragmatic approach. He says it can’t be the endpoint, though he wonders whether the political will exists to jump to $60,000 as the federal bill seeks to do. 

“We’re in a divided Congress right now,” he says. “Is this possible?” 

With the GOP-led House currently threatening a fight with the White House over raising the debt ceiling to pay existing U.S. debt, the fate of new expenditures is very much up in the air. And, on top of that, concerns have emerged about states’ abilities to sustain the pay increases when the runway of federal funding expires.

The proposed grant program in the bill is essentially bridge funding, says Ellen Sherratt, board president of The Teacher Salary Project, a nonpartisan organization that provided input. 

The aim is to get states “to look into how they’re spending their money and how they might be able to move funds around to support a significantly higher teacher salary schedule,” she says.

She acknowledges the federal effort is far from any finish line. It’s an authorizing bill that, if passed, would become an appropriations bill with a price tag attached. She hopes to see parents, teachers, lawmakers, and influential figures – such as celebrities and professional athletes – coalesce around the proposed legislation, providing momentum for moving the pay needle faster. 

“We’ve been trying and trying, and states have managed to an extent,” Ms. Sherratt says. “But the increases that we’re seeing in places like Mississippi and Alabama and elsewhere – they’re still quite modest.” 

Mr. Mota, an Army veteran, finally eclipsed the $60,000 mark about two years ago when he moved from a traditional public school. His upgraded salary at Odyssey Charter School typically covers the bills, but it leaves little wiggle room for any extras.

Earlier in his career, he juggled teaching elementary students, tutoring after school, and working as an adjunct professor at a local community college to make ends meet. Now, cleaning houses helps his bank account, but it also means less time being physically present with his children, who sometimes ask why he’s so busy or tired.

“Nobody should have to work this hard to have a vacation,” he says. “Nobody should have to work this hard ... to afford something like a purse or to go see a concert or whatever.” 

Chinatopix/AP/File

Container trucks jam up at a crossing outside the container port of Nanjing in eastern China's Jiangsu province, Oct. 27, 2022. China's overall trade ties with the world remain large, but a U.S. embargo on advanced semiconductors has disrupted high-tech commerce with China.

In the heady days after the fall of the Soviet Union, globalized trade became an article of faith. The more trade, the better. It not only made nations richer – it also made them less willing to go to war because the economic costs of doing so kept going up.

Over the next three decades, however, doubts began to creep in about this globalization. Some nations made out better than others in a win-win world. Others – such as Iran and North Korea – kept up their militaristic ways, even when sanctions imposed economic costs on their actions. 

Now, many nations are asking the opposite question: Could they be vulnerable from too much trade, especially with countries that don’t share their values or strategic aims? 

This reconsideration of globalization is happening bit by bit, nation by nation, and even company by company. It’s most clearly seen in the gradual drifting apart of China and the West, particularly the United States. And there are no easy answers because, even as trade ties fray, the benefits of globalization remain strong. Trade continues to fatten consumer pocketbooks, boost corporate profits, and bring down prices on thousands of goods from toys to solar panels.

“This tectonic shift is moving very slowly, but notably,” says Joerg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and longtime Beijing resident. “What keeps us together are the consumers.”

Analysts struggle to define this new period with a name: decoupling, deglobalization, Cold War 2.0. This new era has elements of all of these, but it really represents a lessening of faith that economic ties can build common ground among nations despite their geopolitical differences. How far China and the West drift apart may depend on where concerns about national security and desire for economic growth reach a new equilibrium.

The rethink of globalization stems from a range of events. After Russia’s Ukraine invasion last year, Europe’s overreliance on Russian natural gas became obvious for all to see. During the pandemic, the U.S. fretted it was too reliant on China for face masks and other personal protective equipment – adding to a wider rise in U.S. national security concerns about trade with China in recent years. Now, nations and companies alike are reevaluating their supply chains to see if they’re jeopardizing their own security by importing too much from a single source or exporting too much of their cutting-edge technology. 

A digital “oil embargo”?

Perhaps the clearest bellwether for this new era involves semiconductors, the computer chips embedded in everyday items from alarm clocks to microwaves and cars. Some analysts call semiconductors the oil of the 21st century. If so, then the U.S. last fall initiated against China a digital version of an oil embargo, except this embargo involves only the most advanced chips.

Like many countries, the U.S. has always jealously guarded its most advanced technology, strictly supervising exports of military tech and commercial products that could have military applications. With regard to China, it has also used a “sliding scale” that would allow exports of military-related products as long as they kept the U.S. two generations of technology ahead. But in a September speech, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan outlined broader constraints on U.S. exports to China, including all advanced chip and supercomputing technologies, even if they have no military application, and eliminating the sliding scale, saying that U.S. tech should remain as many generations as possible ahead of China.

Less than a month later, the Biden administration banned U.S. companies from selling their most advanced chips and chipmaking technology to China. Even non-U.S. companies will no longer be allowed to sell their chips or machines to Beijing if they contain U.S. components or were made with U.S. equipment. The administration also barred American citizens, permanent residents, and green card holders from working for Chinese semiconductor companies. In December, the administration added 36 Chinese and Chinese-affiliated firms to its list of companies that no one, even foreign companies, should sell U.S. equipment to without first getting a license from Washington.

“China will be meaningfully behind”

These restrictions represent a huge blow to Beijing’s ambitions to lead in certain technologies, such as supercomputers and artificial intelligence, and to create a military that’s second to none.

“They need chips and components for all the information, infrastructure, computers, and command-and-control systems that they’re trying to put in place to become a modern, high-tech joint force,” says David Finkelstein, director for China and Indo-Pacific security affairs at CNA, an independent research institute based in Arlington, Virginia. “So they’ve got to have access to the best technology out there. And if they can’t get access to it, they need to figure out how to develop it on their own.”

Even during the friendliest of times, China struggled to keep up with the West in semiconductors. Its leading chipmaker – Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. – remains an estimated five years behind its Western competitors. Now, the West’s embargo will make catching up that much harder. 

Ross D. Franklin/AP

Apple CEO Tim Cook pauses after speaking in front of the new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. facility under construction in Phoenix, Dec. 6, 2022. Whether for Apple iPhones or for other equipment, making advanced chips involves an international supply chain that no one country dominates, even the U.S.

“China will be meaningfully behind at least for the next half decade and probably longer,” Christopher Miller, a historian at Tufts University’s Fletcher School and author of a new book “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology,” writes in an email.

From Washington’s perspective, such moves are overdue to counter a growing rival that doesn’t play by the rules. It accuses China of illegally pursuing territorial claims in international waters, mistreating its minorities, routinely stealing Western technology, and manipulating trade to further its own ends without the win-win reciprocity that Western nations expect.

From Beijing’s perspective, America’s moves affirm long-held fears that Washington is out to keep the world’s second-largest economy from assuming its natural position in the world. 

Can China find a new path on chips?

The problem for China is that, in the short term, at least, it has few options to counter such moves. One reason is that semiconductors represent a far more complex challenge than most of the technologies that China has mastered so far. And it is a striking example of the kind of win-win globalization that the West practices and that Beijing is suspicious of.

To begin with, making advanced chips involves an international supply chain that no one country dominates, even the U.S. Thus, a chip in an iPhone might be designed in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel; manufactured in Taiwan with machine tools from the U.S., Japan, and the Netherlands; and packaged in Malaysia, points out Dr. Miller. Trying to replicate that chain domestically would bankrupt China, he adds.

Beijing could invade Taiwan and take over the world’s most advanced chip fabricator, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., but even if the factory survived the attack, China wouldn’t retain the know-how and would certainly lose any access to the other vital pieces of the system.

It can try – and is trying – to convince Europe to ignore America’s technology ban. But Europe sells far more goods to the U.S. than it does to China and shares America’s wariness of Beijing’s intentions. Last June, for the first time, NATO listed China as a strategic challenge to its “interests, security and values.”

Beijing could threaten to cut off Western firms from its huge market, which would devastate some companies but inflict far more damage on China’s economy. European purchases of Chinese goods are responsible for 16 million Chinese jobs while Chinese purchases of European goods produce relatively few European jobs, says Mr. Wuttke of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “China in many ways is more dependent on Europe than we are dependent on China.”

Many Western companies, suddenly aware of their dependence on China, are also diversifying their supply chains to include other countries.

For Chinese President Xi Jinping, these trends create a worrying dilemma. Accepting the demands of globalization may force policy compromises and continued reliance on the West that he does not favor. Turning away from globalization after so many years of rapid development would almost certainly mean slower growth and loss of access to Western technology.

“China is richer, stronger, healthier, safer, cleaner than it’s ever been,” says Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “Yet from Xi Jinping’s point of view, they’re more vulnerable than ever.”

Challenges for the U.S. too

For the U.S., too, a decoupling from China poses risks. For one, there are no guarantees that America’s semiconductor allies, such as Japan and the Netherlands, will go along with the advanced chip embargo. Thus, a tough stance against Beijing may simply hand business to non-U.S. chipmakers. For another, there are drawbacks to completely isolating Beijing from Western technology.   

“There are commercial advantages and national [interests] to having the Chinese in your own technological ecosystem and in the hierarchies that Western companies lead,” Dr. Kennedy adds. “Those hierarchies are very difficult to change. And you gain a lot of information about China’s capabilities by having them in those hierarchies with you. And you also, by 40 years of interaction, raise the costs for China to go to war with you.”

For the moment, it’s big Western and Chinese corporations that have the biggest incentive to try to find a new equilibrium in Western-Chinese relations. In September, after months of effort, the European Chamber of Commerce released an in-depth report with 967 recommendations for how Beijing could help European companies flourish in China. “Our members, for whatever reason, have not given up yet,” says Mr. Wuttke. “They still believe that China can change.”

At 5 p.m. on a Saturday in late November, a group of jittery kids and teens crowd the pavilion in the central square of this small town in northeastern El Salvador. They’re staging an entirely new version of the story of Tarzan – rewritten and adapted by the young actors to reflect the way they’d like to see themes of equality and opportunity play out in their own lives.

In this version of the classic tale, which is graced with the natural sound and set design of squawking grackles and Cinquera’s colorful sunset, the years have passed. The time has come for the retirement of Tarzan, the protector of the jungle. In front of the animal council, he proposes that his child replace him.

“Tradition dictates that your son should succeed you,” a gorilla scolds him. “But you only have a daughter.”

Tarzan, played by Erick, a gangling boy with a quiet voice, responds: “And what’s wrong with her? Can’t Tarzana do what I do?”

But it’s not just the man of the house doing the talking. Tarzana, played by a spirited 10-year-old named Monica, pushes back, too: “Why am I being put to the test when I have lived here all my life?”

It’s a question most of the youths on stage have asked themselves at one point in a town – and nation – where gender stereotypes, machismo, and gender-based violence run rampant. Questioning norms around what a girl or boy “can” do based on their gender, whether it’s playing with baby dolls or pursuing one’s studies, is a key part of the Comprehensive Childhood Development Project. The group has been running storytelling workshops in small towns across northeastern El Salvador over the past year to address sensitive issues for young people, like violence.

El Salvador has sky-high rates of femicides (the killing of a woman due to her gender) and worrying school dropout numbers. In 2021, an estimated 16 girls between the ages of 10 and 17 became pregnant each day, according to the Observatory of Girlhood and Adolescence. It was statistics like these, and a lived culture of old-fashioned gender ideals, that drove a group of community leaders and local librarians, in partnership with international nongovernmental organizations, to introduce the storytelling program to Cinquera and surrounding towns. Rewriting a traditional fairy tale is far from a silver bullet solution to El Salvador’s towering challenges, but empowering the next generation of citizens and leaders to imagine and build a more just and equal world can make lasting waves, participants and organizers say.

Mahé Elipe/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Allison Michelle rehearses in San Nicolás, El Salvador, on Nov. 24, 2022. She plays Little Red Riding Hood in a version of the fairy tale that was reinterpreted to take a gender perspective into consideration.

Storytelling workshops and creative play focused on shifting gender stereotypes can “sow a little seed, so that when [participants] are adults they can start to break those patterns,” says Heydi Gómez, part of the local Association for Municipal Development and Reconstruction.

A new perspective?

In El Salvador, discrimination against girls often begins early. “Because society is machista and patriarchal, if a man has only daughters, they say, ‘Oh, you’re not a man,’” says Jaime Lovo, a councilman in charge of the youth committee in the municipality of Cinquera and a proud father of two girls.

These stereotypes go beyond schoolyard jabs. “In our community, the top [leadership] positions are assigned almost exclusively to men,” says Iris Escobar, an assistant at the San Francisco Echeverría library who in 2017 lost a community board election for president by just a handful of votes. She’s currently serving as deputy. “If a woman is elected, men criticize her; they tell her that she is not qualified to carry out that position because it has always been held by a man,” she says.

Mr. Lovo is hopeful these dynamics will change with younger generations. It’s part of why he put his eldest daughter in the community’s first ever storytelling workshop this year.

“These processes allow young people to have a broader vision of the world,” he says. “The more empowered a girl or boy is, the better society develops. When they’re adults, they will have better leadership potential: They can lead … a municipal council, even be part of the government,” Mr. Lovo says.

The use of fairy tales and local Salvadoran stories like El Cipitío takes something commonly known and accepted and looks at it from a new perspective. In El Cipitío, a story about a smart-aleck boy who ceaselessly teases girls, the lead character was rewritten during the workshop to befriend and support his peers. Or, take Snow White, a story commonly used in workshops run by the Salvadoran NGO Leer Para Soñar (Read to Dream). “We questioned participants: ‘Would you allow a person you just met to kiss you while you were asleep?’” says Marilin Cabezas, president of Read to Dream. For most, the answer is no, and it leads to important conversations around consent and impunity.

Mahé Elipe/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Children from the village of San Francisco, El Salvador, try on their costumes during a dress rehearsal on Nov. 23, 2022. They are performing a modern reinterpretation of the story of Tarzan as part of a storytelling workshop that aims to draw attention to and question the roles of inequality and gender stereotypes in their community.

Storytelling and performance are increasingly used as tools for social change, with programs like Read to Dream, established in El Salvador in 2016, and Mulheres Inspiradoras (Inspiring Women), a Brazilian storytelling project that recently became a public policy of the State Secretariat of Education of the Federal District, aimed at confronting machismo and structural racism.

The kids “get into the characters by playing, and so they grasp things more easily,” says Carolina Cartagena, a librarian at San Francisco Echeverría, referring to difficult themes like bullying, violence, and the expression of emotions. The dramatization of classic stories is a gateway to questioning traditional patterns of discrimination, she says. “As the boys rehearsed, they seemed less likely to arrogantly utter those words and phrases that make girls [feel] lesser,” says Ms. Cartagena.

She recalls watching the young boy who plays the gorilla in the Tarzan story. When he first started participating in the project, he talked about the fictional daughter of Tarzan harshly, passionately rebuking her through his character’s lines. As time went on, however, Ms. Cartagena says his tone softened as she watched his views shift on what girls can achieve and the treatment they deserve. 

But these programs can only go so far.

Mahé Elipe/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Allison Michelle rehearses for a play in San Nicolás, El Salvador, on Nov. 24, 2022. She plays Little Red Riding Hood in a version of the story that she and her peers reinterpreted during a storytelling camp meant to help youths reconsider the role of gender, violence, and inequality in their communities.

“Change in the individual can’t take place if there aren’t changes in the environment,” Ms. Cabezas says. El Salvador had the third highest rate of femicides in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020, according to the United Nations’ Gender Equality Observatory, and the government has not included gender equality in its approach to public policy design. Despite Latin America having some of the most comprehensive legislation on violence against women, its implementation has been incomplete. The U.N. committee dedicated to eliminating gender discrimination in 2017 expressed concern around the presence of patriarchal stereotypes in the judicial system and law enforcement in El Salvador, specifically.

“I’m afraid”

The San Nicolás community center is buzzing with youthful shouts and laughter. The group attending a workshop on gender equality on this late November afternoon is varied in age and gender. There are little boys who snicker when they are told there is nothing wrong if they want to play with dolls, sitting alongside teenage girls who speak freely about macho behavior and how male peers raise walls of rejection when homosexuality is discussed.

During a break, two 16-year-old participants, Jaqueline and Daniela, say machismo is nothing new here. It’s “something ugly,” says Jaqueline. They see it daily, she says, in the gendered difference of household chores or in how certain men discriminate against others for helping around the house.

When asked what they think is most needed so that there is less gender inequality in their small town, Jaqueline widens her eyes and answers at lightning speed: “Respect, above all.” She discusses the reaction girls her age get when they dress in something short. Men will automatically say they are conceited, foolish, or that they just want attention. “I sometimes dress like this, but it’s not because I want to show off. It’s just that I feel comfortable,” Jaqueline says, adding that she believes learning respect needs to start in the home.

A few minutes before curtain call at the Tarzan play, Erick sits in a corner of Cinquera’s central square, away from the other children. He looks anxious. Monica, his co-star, approaches. Dressed in synthetic leopard-print Tarzan and Tarzana costumes, they agree the blazing sun is terrible. “I’m afraid I’ll forget my lines,” Erick tells her, dropping his guard and ignoring, even if momentarily, the societal lesson that most boys here have been taught all their lives: to come off as tough. I’m afraid I’ll “make a fool of myself,” he continues.

“Me too,” Monica replies in solidarity. “Me too.”

Since first putting paintbrush to canvas almost eight decades ago, American artist Alex Katz has been featured in nearly 500 group exhibitions and headlined more than 250 solo shows around the world. His depictions of joyful family celebrations and pleasant social gatherings, often rendered in flat forms, vivid colors, and on a large scale, are now iconic. 

In fact, his portraits of people mixing and mingling are such trademarks that a current retrospective devoted to the still-prolific painter at New York’s Guggenheim Museum is aptly titled “Alex Katz: Gathering.”

Also widely shown and highly recognizable are his numerous paintings of Ada, his wife of 64 years, as well as his luminous plein-air landscapes, often inspired during summers in Maine. 

What has somehow slipped under the radar about Mr. Katz is his close collaborations with performing artists, especially avant-garde theater ensembles, choreographers, and dancers, most notably the Paul Taylor Dance Company. 

But Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, is changing that with an exhibition focused on this aspect of Katz’s illustrious career, celebrating not only his painting talent, but also his inventiveness as a designer of stage sets and costumes. 

Isaac Katz/Courtesy of Colby College

Alex Katz, who first started painting almost eight decades ago, relaxes in Maine in 2021.

“Alex Katz: Theater and Dance,” on display through Feb. 19, is the first comprehensive museum exhibition of his highly collaborative, exuberant, and playful work with performing artists. It features a mix of mediums and materials, showcasing his explorations of dance and choreography in paint, but also with some never-before-seen sketches, collages, photographs, film, and “cutouts” – two-dimensional sculptures that informed his stage sets. 

Mr. Katz didn’t consider this work much of a deviation. “Working on the theater and dance seemed very natural to me,” he comments in an email interview. “I didn’t think of it as much different from painting.” 

Museums, however, have been slow to embrace these less-traditional art forms and even to highlight friendships between artists working in different media such as Mr. Katz and Mr. Taylor, says Levi Prombaum, Katz consulting curator who assisted curator Robert Storr on the Colby exhibit with guidance from the artist and his team. 

“There’s a different consciousness now about the interplay with this medium,” says Mr. Prombaum. “The rise of performance art within the museum space is a recent phenomenon.” 

Also at play could be the perception that this aspect of Mr. Katz’s career is somehow less significant than his contribution to modern realist painting.  

“I can only surmise that this work has been considered tangential to Katz’s overall oeuvre and therefore of less interest and import,” says Maine art scholar Carl Little. But it’s more related than one might realize. “First and foremost,” he adds, “there’s the connection to his lifelong focus on the figure, which plays out with striking effect in many of his designs for dance and theater.”

© Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Among the pieces at the Colby College museum exhibit is this one, “Post Meridian” (1991).

Since the 1950s, Mr. Katz – who splits his time between Manhattan and Maine – has enjoyed a close relationship with Colby College Museum of Art, which gave him his first big break. “It originally started with Bill Cummings [a co-founder of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture], who was a fan and supporter of my work when no one else was,” explains Mr. Katz. “We were friends and he introduced me to Colby, and we seemed to fit. They needed something new at the time and I needed a place to show my work.”

Today, the museum, which specializes in American art, owns more than 900 Katz works, including 400 given by the artist himself. In 1996, Colby College opened a wing devoted to the collection. 

“It makes sense,” says Mr. Little, “that Colby is the first arts institution to focus on these designs. The museum boasts an impressive collection of Katz’s art and is always finding new ways to showcase it.” 

The latest exhibition does that, he says, noting that the rapport between Mr. Katz and Mr. Taylor, with its highs and lows, “makes for a compelling story.” 

“How many artists initiate a new dance piece? And how many choreographers choose to be challenged by an artist’s vision?” he asks.

Mr. Katz, who once remarked to The New York Times that “Paul’s art is about astonishment and adventure,” looks back fondly on his work with Mr. Taylor. “I had ideas of staging; it wasn’t decorating,” he explains. “It was kind of fun to try them out particularly on Paul; we tried stuff that was insane.”  

© Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Alex Katz helped design sets for “The Red Robins,” a play by Kenneth Koch, in the 1970s. One of the set pieces, also named “The Red Robins” (1977), is featured in the exhibit “Alex Katz: Theater and Dance.”

Since Mr. Taylor’s death in 2018, dancers have continued to model for the artist, and some of the most stunning portraits in the Colby exhibit were painted just in the past few years. 

“With the painting, I’m more efficient than I was when I was younger,” says Mr. Katz, who still logs many hours in his Lincolnville studio, about an hour east of Colby on Maine’s Midcoast, and on the same property as his much-painted yellow 19th-century farmhouse. 

He never grows weary of the legendary Maine light, which has attracted artists for centuries. Mr. Katz first became smitten in 1947, when studying at the Skowhegan school. But his ties to New York also run deep. He was born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrant parents, grew up in Queens, earned a degree at Cooper Union, and has been intimately connected to and influential in the city’s arts community. 

So, dividing his time between his adopted state and his native New York suits him just fine. “I like painting outdoors and Maine is a great place to do that,” he explains. “There’s nice light and people seem to accept being a painter like being a carpenter. Growing up in Queens, being a painter was something weird. One place balances the other. I wouldn’t want to spend a whole year in either place.” 

Lois Greenfield

Artist Alex Katz also designed costumes, including the ones featured in this studio performance photograph taken by Lois Greenfield of “Incandescence,” Parsons (1990).

Another locale entirely is now on his radar: “I look forward to showing my new environmental water and grass paintings in Venice,” he says. Indeed, Mr. Katz’s latest work will be unveiled at next year’s Biennale in Venice, Italy. 

Clearly, as Jacqueline Terrassa, director of Colby College Museum of Art, notes, “Alex Katz does not want to be bored.” She is awed, she adds, by how “he’s always challenging himself to try something new.” 

That’s precisely what keeps him motivated day after day. Or as he puts it succinctly: “New thrills. They come with taking risks and that keeps me going.” 

AP

Sally Azar, a Palestinian Christian, is ordained as the first female pastor in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem, Jan. 22.

In prolonged conflicts, small breakthroughs toward peace can sometimes herald larger shifts. One such step forward may have just happened in Jerusalem. On Sunday, a young Palestinian woman became the first female Christian pastor in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Christians make up a tiny portion of the Palestinian population, just 1% in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the investiture of the Rev. Sally Azar in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land could send a wide ripple. It is an important marker for gender equality and social justice at a time when Palestinians are poised for a generational shift in political leadership – a shift in which women expect to have an influential role.

“It’s strange that we still have to argue that women can teach the Bible or perform the sacraments,” the Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, told the BBC. “This tells me that despite the progress we’ve made as Palestinians, when it comes to empowering women and women’s rights, that there is still work to be done.”

The formation last month of the most conservative Israeli government in history has deepened international concerns over the prospects of a future Palestinian state. But the more pressing issue for Palestinians is the future of their own leadership. The last presidential election was in 2005, the last parliamentary election in 2006. Those ballots set up an enduring political divide.

The Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas presides in much of the West Bank. The Islamic fundamentalist party Hamas, meanwhile, controls the Gaza Strip. In 2007, Mr. Abbas sidelined Parliament and has ruled by presidential decree ever since. Five unity agreements between Fatah, the party of Mr. Abbas, and Hamas have dissolved.

Both factions are deeply unpopular. A December poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah found that 81% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip say the institutions run by the Palestinian Authority are corrupt. Some 69% said the same of Hamas-led institutions.

That disenchantment, along with Mr. Abbas’ long tenure in office, is fueling anticipation of change. Separated by emigration, exile, and the physical barriers of the Israeli occupation, women and young Palestinians are uniting through social media. Civil society groups are training young men and women for roles in peace negotiations with Israel and internal Palestinian reconciliation. Their work recognizes that women, in particular, bear the brunt of conflict and are therefore instrumental to peace.

“The way we live is difficult – Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Israelis, and Jews – all living together as we all try to find our ways to adjust together,” Ms. Azar said in a 2019 interview with the Lutheran World Federation. “We are struggling with the empowerment of women in our society due to attitudes in our culture. ... The commitment to the empowerment of youth and women, I found this really important.”

Generational pivots in leadership are an opportunity to reset values. For Palestinians, an upwelling demand for equality is evidence of their readiness and right for self-governance.