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Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon on Marco Baravalle’s new book, plus Jasmine Wahi on the continued fight for arts and culture after the midterm elections.
“Radical politics,” “marginalized communities,” “feminist art” … If you see these terms peppering wall labels at a major museum, there’s an excellent chance the institution behaves in direct opposition to those values and groups. Scholars Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon, who were also among the organizers of the historic Strike MoMA protests in 2021, know this pattern all too well. It’s part of the neoliberal capture of art institutions, which Italian curator and activist Marco Baravalle lays bare in his new book, The Battleground of Art. Read on for a review by Husain and Dhillon, who write that it’s a toolkit for building a better, freer art world.Meanwhile, in the United States, that art world finds itself at a crucial turning point. In the wake of the midterm elections, longtime nonprofit arts leader Jasmine Wahi reminds us that the fight is only beginning. She opines today about the importance of holding Democratic officials accountable not just for redressing the damage inflicted by the Trump administration, but also for taking its responsibility to artists and culture workers seriously. “Rebuilding the same inadequate baseline is not enough,” she explains.More in the news today, including public backlash against Egypt’s arrest of the editor of an independent publication and San Francisco-based painter Hiroshi Sato’s resistance against Silicon Valley and enshittifcation through his quietly subversive art. Heaven knows we could all use more of that.
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor, books
In the afterglow of the blue-nami, those of us who make, organize, fund, and sustain cultural life are feeling a twinge of hope. But I find myself slipping into a spiral of anxiety as the everyday reality of economic precarity sets back in. Our newly elected Democratic congressional leaders have an opportunity to change that reality — pushing back against Trump is necessary — but it cannot be the full extent of their ambition. | Jasmine Wahi
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In “The Battleground of Art,” curator and activist Marco Baravalle dissects the art establishment’s co-optation of radical politics and uplifts the stories of collectives that resist it. | Nitasha Dhillon and Amin Husain
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“Insincere ironic detachment is abundant,” the Bay Area artist told Hyperallergic. “What is niche now are sincere depictions of the present.” | Max Blue
Much has been written about artists, curators, and art historians. Oskar Bätschmann’s The Art Public: A Short History is dedicated to the spectators on the other side. | David Carrier