Posts in Art and Activism

Illustration of a performer at a dressing room mirror, contemplating the risks of going public with their art.

When Risk Becomes Real: A Personal Story

The moment before going public, where artistic courage begins with private calculation. The Arts, Courage, and Consequence[…]

Detail from Dread Scott’s 1989 installation "What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?"

Before You Speak Out: A Creator’s Risk Framework

Dread Scott, What is the Proper Way to Display a US Flag?, 1989. Detail from installation. Viewers[…]

The Herds. Photo by Vegard Aasen.

How Creativity Strengthens Movements

The Herds transforms sidewalks and plazas with puppetry, movement and ritual, inviting participants to reimagine land, ecology[…]

Doris Salcedo's "Shibboleth"

Hiding the Truth to Keep It Alive

Columbian artist Doris Salcedo’s “Shibboleth” (2007) is a long, deep fissure carved into the floor of London’s Tate Modern[…]

Workers at Bibb Mill in Macon, Georgia, 1909. Photograph: Lewis Hine/The U.S. National Archives

When Those in Power Lie, the Arts Help Us See

The mill owners called it “helping out.” Lewis Hine’s lens called it what it was: child labor.[…]

You talkin' to me?

You talkin’ to me?

When American actor, director and producer Robert De Niro  talks… Here is a thought from one of[…]