Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

196 Alan W. Moore
FIGURE 7.2. Ah! The Hopeful Pageantry of Bread and Puppet, a Wlm about the Bread and Puppet
Domestic Resurrection Circus shot between 1990 and 1998, by Dee Dee Halleck and Tamar Schumann.
Released 2005. Production still by Ron Simon. Courtesy of Dee Dee Halleck.
Much of this countercultural collectivity came to bear on the
world of high art in New York with the coalescence of the Art Workers Coalition
in 1969. This group began with an action in the Museum of Modern
Art 10 protesting a violation of artists’ rights. The well-organized self-removal
of a sculpture by kinetic artist Takis brought agitated museum ofWcials out to
talk to the artist and his supporters. This and subsequent events were closely
covered in the New York Times, as well as the “underground” weeklies Village
Voice and the East Village Other, and the group’s meetings swelled.
This all followed on the May 1968 “events” in Paris, an insurrection
in which the New York–based Living Theatre played an active role.
Sit-ins at the Venice Biennale and takeovers of art schools by their students
in England led New Yorkers to feel they “ought to be doing something.” 11
The AWC was an antihierarchical, democratically open organization
of artists. They drew up an agenda to transform the art world and pressure
museums to change. The demands of the group were grounded in the
civil rights struggle—equal exhibition opportunities for artists of color and