I’m not being dramatic when I say the new Smokey Bear campaign couldn’t have come soon enough
Plus: In honor of the 50th anniversary of Watergate, please enjoy these “All The President’s Men” book covers
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Watergate, please enjoy these “All The President’s Men” book covers
I’m not being dramatic when I say the new Smokey Bear campaign couldn’t have come soon enough
A woman paid this museum $10 million and it now bears her name and carries her art
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Watergate, please enjoy these “All The President’s Men” book covers

On this day 50 years ago, five burglars were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel complex.
Washington Post reporter Alfred E. Lewis first reported the break-in, and on June 19, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published their first front page story on what would become the Watergate scandal.
Richard Nixon would resign from office in 1974 over Watergate, but not before Woodward and Bernstein published “All The President’s Men.” The book’s first edition cover was a collage of TIME photos by designer Wendell Minor, who later did covers for David McCullough’s “1776” and David Herbert Donald’s “Lincoln.”

The shot of Nixon that Minor used in his cover was also used in an early paperback rerelease and for Simon & Schuster’s 50th anniversary edition. The 1976 movie tie-in paperback used a photo of Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Robert Redford as Woodward.
Bernstein told Stephen Colbert this week that Nixon was a “criminal president who tried to undermine the very basis of our democracy, our electoral system,” but that former President Donald Trump took it another step.
“Trump also tried to undermine the electoral system but went farther,” Bernstein said. “He staged a coup to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the duly elected successor Joe Biden, who was elected fairly and freely. And then we have in this coup attempt the first seditious president of the United States.”
I’m not being dramatic when I say the new Smokey Bear campaign couldn’t have come soon enough

The Ad Council’s new Smokey Bear campaign is now out in the wild as the West burns.
Outdoor ads have gone up this month in cities including Denver and Los Angeles. The new out-of-home campaign includes digital posters and digital bus shelter ads with art from Tracie Ching, Thomas Wimberly, and Jesus Velasquez. The campaign was done in collaboration with Amplifier, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Association of State Foresters, and it will run through 2025.
As of Friday, there are 32 large active fires burning 1.6 million acres in Arizona, Alaska, California, New Mexico, and Texas, and more than 7,300 firefighters and personnel are assigned to fires, per the National Interagency Fire Center, or NIFC.
We’re not even halfway done with the year yet, but 2022 has seen more wildfires and acres burned than any year in the past decade, according to the NIFC.
The new Smokey campaign will supplement existing PSAs on television, radio, print, and online, and Amplifier created coloring pages and gifs for the campaign as well.
Remember, to extinguish a campfire, drown and stir and drown again until no embers are exposed or smoldering and it’s cool to the touch. Only you can prevent wildfires.
A woman paid this museum $10 million and it now bears her name and carries her art
The new exhibition Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld: In-Between the Silence is now on display at the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Gallery of the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, Calif. It runs through fall 2022, but if you can’t make it before then, there’s no rush, because the Kleefeld Gallery is dedicated to her work, so you can always catch the next show.
Work from Kleefeld — including 10 canvases, 74 paintings, and 104 drawings — make up roughly 6% of the California State University Long Beach museum’s permanent collection, according to Los Angeles Times’ art critic Christopher Knight, who wrote that he is unaware of Kleefeld’s work in any other museum’s collection.
Who is Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld, you ask? She’s an author, artist, and donor who gave $10 million to the museum in 2019 that now carries her name.

Knight called Kleefeld’s work “frankly terrible — by far the worst I’ve seen on display in a serious exhibition venue, public or private, for profit or nonprofit, in years” and said in agreeing to show her work, the museum is “continuing in perpetuity a worthless but high-profile art project.”
Museum director Paul Baker Prindle told the Times that Kleefeld approached the school about donating her work and the school “responded favorably, along with a request for a cash gift.” At least they’re being honest!
I’ll be off next Tuesday, but will return to your regularly scheduled newsletter later next week. — Hunter