Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running will be the first survey in the United States of the poet, filmmaker, and tireless promoter of avant-garde cinema. The exhibition will focus on the intersection of art and exile in the Lithuanian artist’s work, arguing that Mekas’ embrace of art and New York’s creative community was deeply informed by his experience as a refugee. At the museum, the filmmaker’s status as an émigré of the post–World War II generation will be presented as a paradigm for the Jewish experience, as well as a contemporary point of connection to the record numbers of people worldwide now experiencing forced migration.
Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”