From an initial curatorial team of 4 Brooklyn Museum staff, Agitprop! has snowballed to include 92 a

From an initial curatorial team of 4 Brooklyn Museum staff, Agitprop! has snowballed to include 92 artists (60 living and 32 deceased), 41 collectives, and 41 co-curators (both individuals and collectives). The works in the exhibition span 23 countries and 105 years of history, each representing an urgent struggle for social progress. Political art is often examined in museum exhibitions; the Brooklyn Museum in particular has a long history of engaging with material related to activism and social justice. With Agitprop! we have ventured into the less familiar terrain of directly addressing the politics of museum practice through a re-thinking of the curatorial process. Inviting such an array of artists to act as co-creators of an exhibition can be a messy venture, though each additional wave of nominations yielded exciting new points of entry and cross-pollinating dialogues. Over the past eight months of the exhibition’s run, we have also witnessed the ways current events can offer fresh perspectives on historic and contemporary artworks, reminding us that the battles artists waged a century ago endure today. A 1916 photograph of suffragists campaigning for the right to vote marks a century of progress leading to the first woman earning the United States presidential nomination. Likewise, the recent national Black Lives Matter outcry and artist Dread Scott’s Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Genocide and Slavery (pictured above) emphasize the continued struggle for racial equality, especially when viewed alongside documentation of the flag flown from the NAACP’s offices to announce lynchings between 1920 and 1938. Ultimately, the exhibition may present more questions than it answers, both about the role of art in social change and alternative models for curating. What does seems clear is that the embrace of collaboration, complexity, and chance is, at its core, a feminist gesture and an example of the modes of thinking feminism has made space for within museums. Catch Agitprop! in person before it closes this Sunday, August 7. Posted by Stephanie Weissberg  -- source link

More pics about