From September 25, 2025 - January 9, 2026, the Neubauer Collegium presented an exhibition of new works by Soviet-born Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky. Teasingly titled The Global Political Crisis, the exhibition consists of a suite of erotic drawings in Cherkassky’s signature diaristic style and four large acrylic paintings with similarly sexually charged content, as well as an erotic sculpture and a small collection of jokey pornographic tchotchkes. Touching on the vexed issue of free speech at a moment when political and cultural leaders seem to have very clear ideas about what art should say and do (or, just as patronizingly, what it shouldn’t say and do), Cherkassky’s humorous paean to the “joy of sex” offers a vision of everyday desire that stands in defiant contrast with the planetary polycrisis alluded to in the title. More than a mere escapist fantasy, Cherkassky’s foray into the age-old tradition of ars erotica symbolizes the importance of pleasure in our trying times – of joining the beleaguered forces of Eros against a surging spirit of Thanatos.