Links
Center for Artistic Activism. The Center for Artistic Activism is a place to explore, analyze, and strengthen connections between social activism and artistic practice.
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973–1991. A survey of leading women artists that examined the crucial feminist contribution to the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and ’80s. Included works by Take It or Leave It artists Judith Barry, Dara Birnbaum, Jenny Holzer, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Adrian Piper, and Martha Rosler.
DIS Magazine. DIS is a New York–based collective that explores the tension between popular culture and institutional critique, while facilitating projects for the most public and democratic of all forums – the Internet.
Douglas Eklund, "The Pictures Generation," from the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Includes works by Take It or Leave It artists Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, and Allan McCollum.
Hirshhorn Museum, Directions series. Directions, established in 1979 by the Hirshhorn’s first director Abram Lerner as a group installation and transformed in 1987 to highlight the work of a single artist or paired artists, has been a long-standing hallmark of the museum’s exhibition program and partnership with living artists. Bringing a diverse range of emerging and more-established artists from around the world to Washington, the series provides a prominent space on the National Mall—be it in a traditional gallery, the lobby of the museum, outside on the plaza, or even on the building itself—for new work and new ideas. Includes works by Take It or Leave It artists Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, Adrian Piper, and Mike Kelley.
LTTR. LTTR is a feminist genderqueer artist collective with a flexible, project-oriented practice. LTTR produces an annual independent art journal, performance series, events, screenings, and collaborations.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. This Will Have Been covered the period from 1979 to 1992. During this era, the political sphere was dominated by the ideas of former US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the music scene was transformed by punk and the birth of hip-hop, and our everyday lives were radically altered by a host of technological developments, from the Sony Walkman and the ATM to the appearance of MTV and the first personal computers. This exhibition attempted to make sense of what happened to the visual arts in the United States during this tumultuous period. Included works by Judith Barry, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Jimmie Durham, Robert Gober, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and other Take It or Leave It artists.
Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. The first institutional exhibition to examine comprehensively the international foundations and legacy of art made under the influence of feminism. This groundbreaking and long-awaited historical survey focused on the crucial period of 1965 to 1980, when the majority of feminist activism and art making took place around the world. Included work by Take It or Leave It artists Dara Birnbaum, Mary Kelley, and Adrian Piper.
New Museum of Contemporary Art, Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object. The abstraction of the consumer object has been achieved through the spectacular effects of advertising, display, and presentation strategies that are directed more at motivating the viewer's desire for consumption than at demonstrating the utilitarian properties of the object. This exhibition sought to raise some fundamental questions regarding the shifting state of economic and social exchange and to suggest ways in which the work of certain artists and critics has addressed these issues. Inherent in the work of the artists included is the necessity for change, not only within the over-commercialized environment of the art world but in economic conditions in general. Included Take It or Leave It artists Judith Barry, Gretchen Bender, Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler, Allan McCollum, and Haim Steinbach.
New Museum of Contemporary Art, Difference: On Representation and Sexuality. Over the past ten years, a significant body of work has explored a complex terrain triangulated by the terms sexuality, meaning, and language. In literature, the visual arts, criticism, and ideological analysis, attention has focused on sexuality as a cultural construction, opposing a perspective based on a natural or biological "truth." This exhibition charted this territory in the visual arts. It presents work by its main participants. And it explores some of the radical implications of this approach. Its thesis—the continuous production of sexual difference—offers possibilities for change, for it suggests that this need not entail reproduction, but rather revision of our conventional categories of opposition. Included Take It or Leave It artists Judith Barry, Dara Birnbaum, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine,and Martha Rosler.
New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Art of Memory / The Loss of History. Memory. It is unstable, fragile, and problematized. At present, it is not a matter of whether or not one is capable of remembering, but of what is remembered and its relation to what is not remembered, or to its "reality." History. It is no longer constituted by the facts but by just so many memories, informed not by events but by their representations. Included Take It or Leave It artists Judith Barry, Louise Lawler, Adrian Piper, Stephen Prina, Martha Rosler, and Christopher Williams.
Not An Alternative. Not An Alternative is a ten-year-old Brooklyn-based arts collective and nonprofit organization with a mission to affect popular understandings of events, symbols, and history. Through engaged critical research and design, the group curates and produces interventions on material and immaterial space, bringing together tools from architecture, theory, exhibition design, and political organizing.
Occupy Museums. Occupy Museums is an ongoing protest that calls out economic injustice in institutions of art and culture.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art. Unsettled presented work by nine artists who used photography to address some of the most controversial political and social issues of the late 1970s through the early 1990s, including feminism, racism, the AIDS crisis, and gay activism. Looking at a diverse range of pictorial strategies, and at works that are by turns confrontational and contemplative, Unsettled examined the historical reasons why many artists made provocative photo-based works in the 1980s, and invited viewers to consider why some of this art still causes controversy, twenty or thirty years after it was made. Included work by Take It or Leave It artists Barbara Kruger, Zoe Leonard, and David Wojnarowicz.
Visual Aids. Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.
WomenArts. WomenArts works to empower an international community of women artists and allies by sharing news about inspiring arts projects and opportunities.
Woman's Building. The Woman's Building in Los Angeles was one of the major centers of activity during the feminist art movement of the 1970s.