File talk:4-Ship of Fools.jpg

This photograph of the artist standing by "Ship of Fools" is placed on an ad page in "Artforum", December 2001, following the political events in the wake of 911, with a caption reading:

"Summer in the city - back of my neck getting dirty and gritty" New York 1966. It was 107 degrees that July weekend when we first crossed the D.M.Z. to bomb the oil depots of Hanoi. Mayor Lindsay walked Harlem, and I, waiting to be drafted, painted 'Ship of Fools'. It was a time when dossiers were made on anyone who openly had concerns about our foreign policy. -Richard Rappaport"

This last sentence, speaking of the Vietnam era, points to a vastly greater degree of surveillance in the future than almost everyone in that present moment, including the artist, could ever imagine.

Ship of Fools is exhibited in Skybo Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh in November 1966 and at Lexington Gallery, the University of Chicago in April 1967, and years later in February 2005 in "Ashes in the Wind, The Work of Mourning" at Garfield Artworks, Pittsburgh as the United States fully engages itself in the Iraqi and Afghan wars.