![]() ![]() The pair is referencing the recent negotiations between New Museum employees and management regarding wages and benefits paid to the lowest-earning members of the museum’s staff. ![]() While Earle and M cite protests against the New Museum’s Bronx Ideas Festival and Warren Kander’s resignation from his position as vice-chairman of the Whitney as motivations for their intrusion into Haacke’s retrospective, they specifically target the New Museum’s recent unionization negotiations as the purpose of their activism, claiming that the altered responses “better expresses the political position of American museums like the New Museum.” Earle and M believe that the New Museum should “have agreed to meet workers at the bargaining table, committed to reducing the income disparity between executive and low-level staff, and ensured their annual budgeting fell in line with the sorts of progressive values they are trading off.” ![]() And it it is worth examining the time and place in which Earle and M made their statement– in a context an artist whose work is intrinsically tied to the social and political contexts in which he is creating, who has said that “information presented at the right time and in the right place can potentially be very powerful.” Grayson Earle and M specifically targeted the New Museum’s recent unionization negotiations The past year has seen a wave of activism that challenges the relationships between museum establishment and the principles that the institutions claim to embrace. It is worth examining the time and place in which Earle and M made their statement Earle claims he was questioning “the efficacy of sanctioned institutional critique,” a form of questioning that is not at all dissimilar to the kind of inquiry that saw Haacke ousted from the New York art world throughout his career. In this way, Earle’s actions seem to espouse the same message as the show he sought to disrupt. In fact, polling and surveying art-goers has been a staple of Haacke’s work for decades now, and the recently hacked exhibit harkens back to Haacke’s previous work ‘MoMA Poll’ (1970), which asked viewers “Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s Indochina Policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November,” a question which becomes less innocent when considered alongside the museum’s clear ties to the Rockefeller family, who were major donors and on MoMA’s board of directors.Īs Haacke’s body of work seeks to examine and critique the systems that have pervaded and dominated the art world and beyond, so too do the activists that hacked his exhibit seek to use it as a platform to question the institutions at play and the narratives they employ to gain the social capital that they need to survive. The politically motivated stunt comes as an intriguing end cap to an exhibit by an artist who made his career at the forefront of institutional critique one who oftentimes similarly questioned the establishment that he operated and existed in. Hans Haacke, MoMA Poll (1970), an early example of Hans Haacke’s subversive work of institutional critique (Courtesy: MoMA) “A global wealth report of 2013 by Credit Suisse, a major Swiss Bank, stated: ‘…the lower half of the global population collectively own less than 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% of adults own 87% of all wealth, and the top 1% account for almost half of all assets in the world.’ What is your opinion on this?” While the hackers, Brooklyn based artist Grayson Earle and a collaborator identified as “M,” randomized the results of most of the poll’s questions, they specifically targeted a question that asks: The poll asks museum guests a number of multiple-choice questions that aim to take a broad look at the demographics and political views of its audience, ranging from simple questions about the age and gender identity of each respondent to deeper probes such as “Should people fleeing repression, misery, and violence in foreign regions be given shelter in your country?” Hackers changed poll results about wealth inequality “New Museum Visitors Poll” is an interactive piece that asks viewers to answer survey questions on an iPad and displays their results in real-time on a nearby screen. In its final week of display, Hans Haacke’s ‘All Connected’ retrospective at the New Museum was hacked, dramatically skewing the results of Haacke’s interactive work “New Museum Visitors Poll” (2019). Hans Haacke, Gift Horse, 2014 (Photo: Ognjen Simic for Fine Art Globe) ![]()
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