Existing comment:
SITES OF PROTEST
Following the accomplishments of the civil rights movement, "putting your body on the line" became by the late 1960s a common precept for demanding social change. Antiwar artists adopted techniques of public protest and direct action, unleashing performances and Happenings in strategically selected sites. They also created works informed by their participation in mass demonstrations like marches and strikes.
The museum became for artists what the university campus was for student activists: the site of authority at which they could direct their protest. Works of institutional critique, such as the Guerrilla Art Action Group's A Call for the Immediate Resignation of All the Rockefellers from the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, raised questions about the very settings in which they took place, calling attention to the connections between audience, museum, and larger political and economic power structures. |