Dear Minister,Dear Administrator,Dear Professors of the Collège de France,Dear Colleagues,Dear staff of the Collège de France,Dear friends,From time to time, one hears that art is a source of courage. Or strength. Or elation. When contemplating fifteenth-century Tuscan frescoes, the great art historian Henri Focillon even described experiencing a feeling of “intellectual safety”. I, for one, do not know what it is like to feel intellectually safe when contemplating a work of art. We would have...