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Over the past decade, social and political movements transformed the arts. From the streets of Chile and Iran to museums in Europe and the United States, and from questions of representation and repatriation to demands for equity and justice, protest and activism affected the creation, presentation, and interpretation of visual arts around the world.
Bringing together artists, scholars, activists, and museum professionals from varied fields and backgrounds, this book explores the intersections between visual art and social movements during the last tumultuous decade. Spanning themes of protest art, museum ethics, restitution, and institutional transformation, the collection considers how visual arts have both responded to and shaped politics and society. Contributors highlight the role of artists as catalysts for change and delve into how institutions grapple with their colonial pasts.
Featuring essays, case studies, and artist spotlights, this book not only documents a critical moment in the art world but also raises thought-provoking questions about its future. In the current moment of heightened global unrest and existential threats to the future of art institutions, it offers vital insight into art’s place in the politics of representation, memory, and resistance.
— Bénédicte Savoy, Professor for Modern Art History at the Technische Universität Berlin
Rich with insight and with evident commitment, this anthology offers museum professionals and students alike a powerful framework for thinking through the challenges shaping cultural practice in a fractured and challenging world.
— Matthew Teitelbaum, director emeritus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A vital collection that reveals how art and museums around the world are reckoning with some of the most urgent issues of our time—race, gender, class, and colonialism. Vishakha Desai has curated an expansive conversation that is both global and profoundly grounded in lived institutional experience.
— Carol Becker, professor of the arts and dean emerita, Columbia University School of the Arts, and author of George’s Daughter
This collection offers a timely and much-needed corrective to entrenched Western orthodoxies in museum practice. With its kaleidoscopic range of perspectives, it will become essential reading for students, scholars, and cultural leaders alike.
— Maxwell L. Anderson, art historian and president of the Souls Deep Foundation
Preface
Part I. Art Making in the Age of Protest
1. Uprising and Black Visual Culture in the Upper South, by Angela N. Carroll
2. Women Artists and Street Politics in Iran, by Pamela Karimi
3. The Art of Protest: Memory, History, and Witnessing in Contemporary Sri Lankan Art, by Sasanka Perera
4. Street Art in the Vanguard: The Politics of Visual Culture in Chile’s Estallido Social, by Terri Gordon-Zolov
5. Beyond Identity: The Unsettling Hope in the Art of Contemporary Hong Kong, by Vennes Cheng and Sau Wai
6. Embodying Memories of Protest: Khaled Barakeh’s MUTE Installation as Relation, by Khaled Barakeh and Anne-Marie McManus
Notes to Part I
Figure Captions to Part I
Part II. Art Sites: Presenting Art in Political Times
7. Oil and Art: Implicating Museums in Climate Change, by Betti-Sue Hertz
8. The Long Last Stand of American Public Monuments: Case Study of the Removal of Charlottesville’s Lee, by Erin L. Thompson
9. The Documenta: A World Art Exhibition in Kassel, Germany, by Bernd Scherer
10. Anadolu Kültür in Its Twenty-Fourth Year: Against the Backdrop of Turkish Politics, Culture, and the Arts, by Asena Gunal
Notes to Part II
Figure Captions to Part II
Featured Artists: A Visual Album, curated by Sandhini Poddar
Part III. Institutions: Restitution and Its Implications
11. Restitution of Cultural Property to Its Countries of Origin: Seven Converging Drivers, by Yudhishthir Raj Isar
12. Beyond State-Centered Restitution? Contestations of Colonial Collections in France and Germany, and Their Constraints, by Lotte Arndt and Yann Legall in conversation with Winni Rust
13. Heritage Diplomacy: Mexico’s Journey Beyond Restitution, by Jessica de Alba-Ulloa
14. Cultural Diversity, Heritage, and Visual Arts: UNESCO’s Approach, by Irina Bokova
Notes to Part III
Figure Captions to Part III
Part IV. Institutions: Ways Forward?
15. Slave History Museums in Africa: Relevance of the Past for the New Generation, by Louisa Onuoha
16. Mutant Museum, by Souleymane Bachir Diagne
17. The Polyphonic Museum, by Donatien Grau
18. A New Museum for a New Era, by Kamini Sawhney
19. Defending Valhalla, by Manouchehr Shamsrizi
20. Musings on Museums: A Conversation, by Adam Weinberg and Vishakha Desai
Postscript
Notes to Part IV
Figure Captions to Part IV
Acknowledgments
Bibliography