Existing comment:
THE END OF THE LONG SIXTIES
We began with an image of Senator McCarthy and his "fixer" Roy Cohn. We end The Long Sixties with another strikingly similar image of Roy Cohn, this time in the early eighties with Donald Trump. Before he died of AIDS, Cohn served as Donald Trump's "fixer," defending his real estate company against charges that it had systematically discriminated against Black tenants. The photograph, in retrospect following Trump's presidency, even more than at the moment it was taken, provides another piece of proof that progress is just an illusion, that battles can be won, but the war is long.
As I write, there is unrest again on the streets of Washington and across the country over the denial of civil rights and the persistence of racism and systemic social and economic inequality. I looked in our collections for Washington art that in some way mirrored my time or might help me to interpret my experience, but it is clear I was looking in all the wrong places. We now understand that many artists were systematically excluded from galleries and museums and were thereby left out of the canon and out of our collections.
Consequently, my initial selection of paintings from the American University Museum's collections represented less of what artists did as we lived through "the long sixties," and more about which White artists were still making paintings in those years-whose work was given wall space in commercial galleries, who was buying what art between 1957 and 1982, and what American University and the Corcoran had been purchasing or accepting as gifts in the ensuing years.
After deciding to supplement work from our collections by borrowing and soliciting gifts, 25% of the artists in The Long Sixties are women, and 25% are African American. As women and African Americans both make up about 50% of Washington's population, the exhibition falls far short of offering a balanced view. What inclusivity there is results from reaching outside our collections to find loans or gifts that could disrupt the standard White art historical narrative.
There have been occasions when White mainstream artists felt they had the freedom and support to make art that reflected their time. Women and Black artists had neither the freedom nor the support, and yet they persevered and made powerful, if often unrecognized, contributions. At the beginning of "the long sixties," artists of all media were subjected to accusations of subversion or treason and sometimes threatened with the loss of livelihoods if their subject matter was perceived to be to the left of Senator McCarthy. This had a chilling effect on the socio-political engagement of mainstream White artists that extended well into the seventies.
The sixties were a very tumultuous time, but its social movements and struggles eventually allowed for some progress towards ending discrimination, securing rights, protecting the environment, and questioning the constant warfare we are engaged in around the world. It took a generation to recover from the repressive climate of the fifties. We are again living in dangerous times. Federal funding for the arts is threatened whenever difficult or controversial subjects are addressed. The culture wars never really ended. Now, more than ever, we need all artists free to engage with today's problems, to reach an audience, to offer resolution and inspire us with hope. |