Each year, some of the world’s finest artists, architects, curators and creative minds come together for three days of rich dialogue at the Art for Tomorrow conference. Ai Weiwei, Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons and Rem Koolhaas are a few of the figures who have taken part in conversations led by New York Times journalists.

Since the conference was first convened by The New York Times International Edition in March 2015, much has happened in the world: wars and invasions, a global refugee crisis, and a killer pandemic. How do art and contemporary culture reflect the times we live in?

That is the question posed by this book, written by Farah Nayeri, a New York Times journalist and long-time Art for Tomorrow moderator. The book is a chronicle of the conference’s most striking moments. It also presents the conference’s current organisers, the Democracy & Culture Foundation, and their ethos: that the arts can – and should – be a force for social change.