The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Art for the Future: Artists Call and Transnational Solidarity in the 1980s

Institution
Tufts University Art Galleries
Grant Cycle
Fall 2018
Amount
$75,000
Type of Grant
Exhibition Support
Website
artgalleries.tufts.edu ↗
Dona Ann McAdams, Procession for Peace with Artists Call banner, New York City, 1984. Silver gelatin print. Courtesy of artist.
Leon Golub, merc., 1984. Lithograph, composition (irreg.): 24 5/16 × 22 5/16 inches; sheet: 29 15/16 × 22 5/16 inches. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. This work was exhibited in the Artists Call Benefit exhibition at Judson Memorial Church in New York and in the Benefit Print Editions by Five Artists at Marion Goodman Gallery in New York.
Dona Ann McAdams, Elena Alexander in Uncle Sam, Performance Festival, Taller Latinoamericano, 1984. Silver gelatin print. Courtesy the artist.
Susan Meiselas, EL SALVADOR, Arcatao, Chalatenango province, 1980. "Mano blanca," signature of the death squads left on the door of a slain peasant organizer. Photographic print, 20 x 24 inches unframed. Courtesy of the artist. This work was exhibited in From Central America at Central Hall Artists Gallery in New York.
Dona Ann McAdams, Procession for Peace with released balloon and name of the disappeared, New York City, 1984. Silver gelatin print. Courtesy of artist.
Hans Haacke, U.S. Isolation Box, Grenada, 1983, 1984. Wood planks, hinges, padlock, spray painted stencil lettering, built by Jeff Plate, 96 x 96 x 96 inches. © Hans Haacke and Artists Rights Society. This work was exhibited in the Benefit exhibition for Artists Call at CUNY Graduate Center Mall in New York.
Claes Oldenburg in his studio discussing his poster design for Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America with Jon Hendricks and Margia Kramer, 1983. Photograph by Gianfranco Mantegna. Courtesy of Doug Ashford.
Artists Call organizational meeting at Leon Golub’s and Nancy Spero’s studio, New York, 1984. Courtesy of Doug Ashford.
Benvenuto Chavajay, Doroteo Guamuche, 2016. Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
Installation view, Group Material, Timeline: A Chronicle of U.S. Intervention in Central and Latin America, P.S. 1, New York, 1984 with red bell-buoy made by Ann Messner, Barbara Westerman, and Bill Allen. Courtesy of Lucy R. Lippard.

Art for the Future: Artists Call and Transnational Solidarity in the 1980s is co-curated by Abigail Satinsky, curator at Tufts University Art Galleries, and Erina Duganne, associate professor of Art History at Texas State University. It focuses on the seminal and largely forgotten 1984 nationwide activist campaign “Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America” that grew out of the friendships, solidarity networks, and political organizing of artists and cultural workers from North and Central America, including artists and curators such as Lucy Lippard, Doug Ashford, Leon Golub, Josely Carvalho, Daniel Flores y Ascencio, Jon Hendricks, and Coosje van Bruggen, among others. To visualize this mobilization against U.S. intervention in Central America – as well as its legacy today – Art for the Future: Artists Call and Transnational Solidarity Since the 1980s will focuses on the friendships and alliances between US and Latin American artists that led to the development of Artists Call. The exhibition will also feature new works by contemporary artists with connections to Central America to show how these activities of the 1980s have served as models—both explicitly and implicitly—for socially engaged artists working between art and politics today.

See Also

We acknowledge our culture’s systemic marginalization of artists because of race, gender, religion, age, ability, sexual orientation, and/or immigration status among other factors. We actively seek to highlight the work of under-represented practitioners and support efforts to address entrenched inequities. 

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts