Themes | Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology Digital Archive

Museum

These artists addressed how ideology inflects culture by borrowing the visual and textual languages of the very institutions within which their work appears.

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N.Y. State Bureau of Tropical Conservation, by Mark Dion, 1992

Mark Dion, N.Y. State Bureau of Tropical Conservation, 1992

Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk, by Andrea Fraser, 1989

Andrea Fraser, Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk, 1989

Mise-en-Scène: Commemorative Toile, by Renée Green, 1992–94

Renée Green, Mise-en-Scène: Commemorative Toile, 1992–94

Representation

Beginning in the 1970s, artists employed methodologies of feminism and psychoanalysis to interrogate how subjectivity and subject positions were represented by the prevailing institutions of art and society.

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Tom Burr, Propped Perfume, 2008

Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses, by Martha Rosler, 1985

Martha Rosler, Global Taste: A Meal in Three Courses, 1985

This Is Not the Documentation of a Performance, by Adrian Piper, 1976

Adrian Piper, This Is Not the Documentation of a Performance, 1976

Politics

Many artists in the 1980s and 1990s were committed to binding the concerns of art to those of society and politics and embracing the radical potential of art to stake positions and participate in debate.

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Nayland Blake, Dual Restraint, 1990

Love and Loss in the Milky Way, by Fred Wilson, 2005

Fred Wilson, Love and Loss in the Milky Way, 2005

Glenn Ligon, Condition Report, 2000

Media

The remarkable rise in the reach and sophistication of the mass media in the 1980s inspired artists to appropriate imagery and techniques from popular culture.

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Casual Shopper, by Judith Barry, 1980–81

Judith Barry, Casual Shopper, 1980–81

Dara Birnbaum, PM Magazine, 1982

Sherrie Levine, Presidential Profile, 1978

America

Beginning with the era in which the "Great Communicator," Ronald Reagan, was president, many artists were prompted to question national identity and American iconography.

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Bedia's Stirring Wheel, by Jimmie Durham, 1985

Jimmie Durham, Bedia's Stirring Wheel, 1985

Haim Steinbach, Backyard Story, 1997

Cady Noland, Frame Device, 1989

Language

Fundamental to the emergence of institutional critique was the use of linguistic models to emulate the function of language as a powerful tool for education and free thought.

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Dara Birnbaum, Arabesque, 2011

Notes on the Margin of the “Black Book,” by Glenn Ligon, 1991–93

Glenn Ligon, Notes on the Margin of the "Black Book", 1991–93

Michael Jackson Fucked Up Big Head Big Foot (MJFUBH), by Paul McCarthy, 2010

Paul McCarthy, Michael Jackson Fucked Up Big Head Big Foot (MJFUBH), 2010

Interaction

Many works engaging institutional contexts for art and culture ask us to interrogate how we, as viewers and citizens, interact with art in a public setting.

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