In January a group of mathematicians, historians, artists and educators gathered at the Institut Henri Poincaré (IHP) for a very unusual workshop on mathematical meaning. Our focus for that week, as part of a special trimester on the use of illustration in mathematical research, was to ask: what would it mean for an illustration to be rigorous [1]? We did not anticipate how urgent the surrounding cluster of questions, about the very definitions of human mathematical practice, would seem, just six months later. Our discussions led to an article, written over the summer in the context of the Leiden Declaration [2], and now accepted in the Notices [3]. The past month or two have seen a heartfelt outpouring of viewpoints on what it means to do mathematics as a human being, and what it will mean in the near future. It is evident from the impassioned discussions that being a mathematician has many and varied important meanings. Mathematical illustration, which includes computer graphics and other media that speak to our senses beyond symbolic communication, is one of the activities of a human mathematician that goes beyond proof-writing. Its own struggles as a discipline can perhaps provide some insight into where mathematics can go from here.