Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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JULIANNE MOORE
Seth Caplan
Photography by Seth Caplan

Jia Tolentino

Writer

WHAT IS YOUR CALLING CARD?

It used to be dosing people out of my purse at parties. Now it’s leaving the hang at 11 p.m. to get in bed. Or, according to my friends when we’re doing impressions of each other, it’s laughing really hard for a long time and then visibly realizing I have no idea what’s going on.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, ALBUM, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

In 2011, I lived in Houston, my hometown, in a tiny run-down apartment a few blocks away from the Menil Collection, one of my favorite art museums. I was adrift, broke, back from the Peace Corps, and absolutely unsure of what the rest of my life would contain. I visited the Cy Twombly gallery a lot. I would walk almost blinded by the sun, almost choked by the heat, across the bright grass into that cool, white little pavilion, and I would stare at Untitled (Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor) [1994]. Thirteen by fifty-two feet, elusively moving, it could still bring me near tears.

“My calling card used to be dosing people out of my purse at parties. Now, it’s leaving the hang at 11 p.m. to get in bed.”

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR WORK?

Ideally, a person should surprise herself every time she writes anything. I’m not sure I’m writing like that right now. As my kids get older and I regain some neurons and alone time, I hope to surprise myself a lot more.

DESCRIBE A RECENT CROSSROADS AT WHICH YOU FOUND YOURSELF.

St. James and Lafayette, in front of the brownstone that faces Underwood Park in Brooklyn and always—literally always —has seasonal inflatables in front. Like, Snoopy in a graduation hat in June, pink hearts in February, turkeys in November, the Grinch in December, you name it. For the first time in my 10 years in this neighborhood, I saw the house undecorated, in the middle of a changeover. I stopped and stared.

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ROSE BYRNE
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JULIANNE MOORE