Art and Democracy

The World Wall: A Vision of the Future without Fear is traveling around the world in the pursuit of peace and understanding through cross-cultural collaboration. Conceived by American Chicana artist Judith Baca, this growing mural travels from country to country, aiming to create a universal language that redefines the possibility of peaceful intercultural relations through…

Confronted with a pile of candy emerging from the corner of a museum, the viewer must decide how to interact with the work: either take a piece of candy, or leave the pile untouched. This work by Félix González-Torres, called Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), begins as a pile of candy equaling the weight…

After stumbling upon a lost address book in the streets of Paris, artist Sophie Calle was inspired to try to understand its owner, Pierre D. Instead of returning the book, she decided to call every contact listed in it in order to piece together the story of Pierre D. Some of her phone calls were…

A privileging of narratives plagues human history. In particular intersectional Queer iconography. Intersectional Queer people are not represented in 17th, 18, 19th, art history. Representation matters. It can directly provide a sense of belonging so often taken for granted. Felix D’Eon re-invents art history by using the same aesthetic language and forms of that era:…

Anti-Blackness in the United has resulted in a violent policing of Black bodies and Black hair in schools, workplaces, and countless other publics and privates- including dance spaces. Instead of fighting to change from within, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in 1984 decided to spearhead the creation of a fundamentally different and separate space, Urban Bush Women….

In an era of rapidly changing body politics, adult society struggles to share what they don’t quite understand with a younger generation. Rebecca Sugar, through her show Steven Universe, provides viewers young and old the opportunity to wrestle with ideas of consent, abuse, and trauma through the experiences of the Crystal Gems. Steven Universe is…

Increasingly, the only spaces we can access have predetermined uses. Where in the city can you take a nap? Where can you hold meetings? Where can you go where the rules of interpersonal interactions are not already coded? Conference rooms, public parks, and coffee shops are all unacceptable options—they are expensive, overly-policed, and precisely defined. Where is…

In 1968 students and faculty at the L’ecole des Beaux-Arts in France founded the Atelier Populaire (the Popular Workshop), a studio space in which anyone could produce a politically-themed poster on the communal printing press. Once printed, no one in the workshop was allowed to sign their posters; this created a collective authorship among the…

Palle Nielsen’s experiment The Model – A Model for a Qualitative Society was originally staged in Stockholm at the Moderna Museet in 1968. There, a large exhibition space was transformed into a giant free playground for children to play without the presence of adults. Nielsen’s ultimate goal was to create a space where kids could…

In the spring of 2017, WetLand docked along Schuylkill River at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia. Mary Mattingly’s mission was to create a floating sculpture, living structure, and public space all in one to prove that thriving in a communal, sustainable urban area is possible. Her intentionally bold vision for the future drew the community in;…