Letter to John from Jonas 

Presented as the October 2026 edition of Staff Picks, Letter to John from Jonas (1999) is Jonas Mekas’s response to a proposed merger between Anthology Film Archives and the Guggenheim Museum. Addressing John Hanhardt, then the Guggenheim’s senior curator of film and media arts, Mekas insists on Anthology’s continued independence.

Mekas had spent decades creating ways for films to circulate on terms their makers determined. In his account of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative’s beginnings, he recalls how Cinema 16’s rejection of Stan Brakhage’s Anticipation of the Night helped prompt the creation of a distribution center run by filmmakers. The cooperative left ownership with filmmakers and made distribution nonexclusive. Anthology, which opened in 1970, gave avant-garde cinema a permanent home for its preservation and regular exhibition.

In the video letter, Mekas’s defense of the institutional freedom also concerns what that offers living filmmakers and artists: belonging, the possibility of being “part of something that is free.” Viewed today, this Mekas’s creative refusal affirms the freedom of cultural institutions to act on their aesthetic and social commitments, even when crisis makes compromise appear necessary for survival.

This edition of Staff Picks is co-presented in collaboration with the Jonas Mekas Estate.