Description
How can artistic activism bring to the fore cases of human rights violations, state violence, and war profiteering? And how can activists’ tactics succeed in raising public awareness by re-enacting ‘the power of the people’? The recent renaissance of artistic activism in a global context evinces interventions that set out to hold museums, institutions, and non-profit organisations accountable. They also allude to a broader crisis of legitimacy that cultural institutions are faced with today. This paper will present such a case study of artistic activism that transpired at the Whitney Museum during 2019 after the revelation that the vice-chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees was also the owner of a company that manufactures military and law enforcement supplies. In fact, as it was soon made public, the company’s tear gas canisters had been used against civilians in fourteen countries, including the United States. The Whitney staff, numerous activist groups, grassroots collectives, artists, theorists, and critics launched a campaign in response to the museum board’s complicity in patterns of artwashing, state violence, and toxic sponsorship. By presenting the diversity of tactics that were deployed, including open letters, protests, boycotts, and agitational unsanctioned interventions, it will become evident that these multiple stakeholders aspired to prefigure a model of museum governance that is transparent and accountable to the communities it is supposed to serve.
Keywords: artistic activism, institutions, Whitney Museum, state violence, governance.
Bio: Konstantinos Pittas is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His thesis focuses on cultural institutions as a model for the spatialisation of democratic politics and for the inscription of a plethora of political claims. His research has been supported by the Cambridge Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC- DTP), the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, and the Onassis Foundation.
