On Monday art writer Antwaun Sargent started
tweeting about the Whitney Museum’s new exhibition
Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a Time of Change, which was to include digital prints, files, posters, and other material related to the recent protests. He noticed the unusual way in which the works were “acquired” by the museum, many for as little as $100 a piece, setting off online criticism. Fast-forward less than 24 hours and the
museum cancelled the show.
Such quick activist successes like that are unusual. Dan Schindel’s points to
two online screenings by the National Museum of the American Indian that tell the story of how decades of Native American activism led a DC football team to change its mascot name. Let us celebrate these moments when people come together and help to make the world better for all of us.
Of course, activism comes in many forms (and art forms). UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s new online project presents a newly digitized collection of
hundreds of hours of raw footage by TVTV, a collective of “video freaks” active throughout the 1970s, including footage of the 1972 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. As you can imagine,TVTV had the same problems supporting their work that creatives have had throughout history:
Despite the acclaim their work received, [Megan] Williams explained how it was a challenge to secure distribution for their programs, which ultimately led to TVTV’s dissolution: “Options were few, and by the end of the ’70s, we had not been able to monetize our work at a level that enabled us to survive and support our growing families.”
What’s new, right?
