Politics of Visual Arts in a Changing World, 2014–2024
About the Book
Over the past decade, social and political movements transformed the arts. From the streets of Chile and Iran to museums in Europe and the United States, and from questions of representation and repatriation to demands for equity and justice, protest and activism affected the creation, presentation, and interpretation of visual arts around the world.
Bringing together artists, scholars, activists, and museum professionals from varied fields and backgrounds, this book explores the intersections between visual art and social movements during the last tumultuous decade. Spanning themes of protest art, museum ethics, restitution, and institutional transformation, the collection considers how visual arts have both responded to and shaped politics and society. Contributors highlight the role of artists as catalysts for change and delve into how institutions grapple with their colonial pasts.
Featuring essays, case studies, and artist spotlights, this book not only documents a critical moment in the art world but also raises thought-provoking questions about its future. In the current moment of heightened global unrest and existential threats to the future of art institutions, it offers vital insight into art’s place in the politics of representation, memory, and resistance.
A bold and far-reaching book confronting the fault lines of our time, from restitution and protest to power and the future of museums, with rare clarity and conviction. Urgent, intelligent, and deeply necessary.
Bénédicte Savoy, Technische Universität Berlin
Rich with insight and with evident commitment, this anthology offers museum professionals and students alike a powerful framework for thinking through the challenges shaping cultural practice in a fractured and challenging world.
Matthew Teitelbaum, Director Emeritus, MFA Boston
A vital collection that reveals how art and museums around the world are reckoning with some of the most urgent issues of our time—race, gender, class, and colonialism. Vishakha Desai has curated an expansive conversation that is both global and profoundly grounded in lived institutional experience.
Carol Becker, Columbia University School of the Arts
This collection offers a timely and much-needed corrective to entrenched Western orthodoxies in museum practice. With its kaleidoscopic range of perspectives, it will become essential reading for students, scholars, and cultural leaders alike.
Maxwell L. Anderson, Art Historian
Contributing Authors
Lotte Arndt
Angela N. Carroll
Khalid Barakeh
Assistant professor at the research center for Cultural and Social History of Art (HiCSA) at the University of Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. Between 2021 and 2025, she has been working on the international research project Reconnecting Objects. Epistemic Plurality and Transformative Practices in and beyond Museums, as part of Bénédicte Savoy's team at the Technical University Berlin.
Khalid Barakeh
Angela N. Carroll
Khalid Barakeh
A conceptual artist, activist, & cultural director who leverages his extensive training in arts from Damascus, Odense, and Frankfurt to challenge structural injustices and amplify marginalized voices. His studio engagement is driven by what he has termed The Practice of Necessity, an ethos that dictates responses to the urgencies of ever-changing sociopolitical realities.
Irina Bokova
Angela N. Carroll
Angela N. Carroll
Two-term Director-General of UNESCO from 2009 to 2017. She was actively engaged in the promotion of culture for sustainable development and the protection of the world’s cultural heritage against the destruction by extremists in Mali, Syria and Iraq. As a result, the UN Security Council adopted in 2017 the landmark Resolution 2347 declar
Two-term Director-General of UNESCO from 2009 to 2017. She was actively engaged in the promotion of culture for sustainable development and the protection of the world’s cultural heritage against the destruction by extremists in Mali, Syria and Iraq. As a result, the UN Security Council adopted in 2017 the landmark Resolution 2347 declaring for the first time the link between peace, security and the protection of cultural heritage.
Angela N. Carroll
Angela N. Carroll
Angela N. Carroll
Accomplished writer, curator, and art historian who is deeply dedicated to exploring the legacies and cultural expressions of the African Diaspora. With an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Carroll’s academ
Accomplished writer, curator, and art historian who is deeply dedicated to exploring the legacies and cultural expressions of the African Diaspora. With an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Carroll’s academic and professional journey is marked by her commitment to amplifying the voices of dynamic artists.
Vennes Cheng, Sau Wai
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Vennes Cheng, Sau Wai
Scholar and curator based in Hong Kong. She is currently the Associate Curator of Hong Kong Visual Culture at M+ Museum. Her research areas include modern and contemporary art of Hong Kong and China, diaspora studies, artist archives, and historical and mnemonic contingency. Cheng was a research fellow in the joint fellowship programme
Scholar and curator based in Hong Kong. She is currently the Associate Curator of Hong Kong Visual Culture at M+ Museum. Her research areas include modern and contemporary art of Hong Kong and China, diaspora studies, artist archives, and historical and mnemonic contingency. Cheng was a research fellow in the joint fellowship programme of the Goethe-Institut, documenta Institut, and documenta Archive in 2021.
Jessica De Alba-Ulloa
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Vennes Cheng, Sau Wai
Adjunct professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) since 2023 and began teaching at the University of Maine's School of Policy and International Affairs (SPIA) in August 2024. Recognized as a National Researcher in Mexico since 2015, her expertise covers Diplomacy and Negotiations, IR Theory, and U.S.-Mexico Foreign Policy, with numerous publications.
Vishakha N. Desai
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
An internationally recognized scholar who currently serves as Senior Advisor to Columbia Global led by Wafaa El-Sadr, Executive Vice President of Columbia Global and an expert in global health and infectious diseases with longstanding experience supporting diverse major health challenges around the world. She is currently a Senior Fellow
An internationally recognized scholar who currently serves as Senior Advisor to Columbia Global led by Wafaa El-Sadr, Executive Vice President of Columbia Global and an expert in global health and infectious diseases with longstanding experience supporting diverse major health challenges around the world. She is currently a Senior Fellow, and formerly Department Chair of the Committee on Global Thought.
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Professor in the departments of French and of Philosophy at Columbia University. His areas of research and publication include History of Philosophy, History of Logic, Islamic Philosophy, African Philosophy and Literature.
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Terri Gordon-Zolov
An interdisciplinary scholar who works at the intersections of memory studies, gender studies, and cultural production. She is currently writing a book on the literature of memory in post-dictatorship Chile. Her co-authored book with Eric Zolov, The Walls of Santiago: Social Revolution and Political Aesthetics, came out in May 2022 in Berghahn Books' "Protest, Culture & Society" series.
Donatien Grau
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Terri Gordon-Zolov
A scholar, editor, and museum executive. He is the editor of Potential Museums (Paradis, 2018) and of Under Discussion,The Encyclopedic Museum (Getty, 2021), the author of Living Museums (Hatje Cantz, 2020), the co-author of The Transitory Museum (with Emanuele Coccia, Polity, 2018) and of La Magie du Musée (with Alejandro Jodorowsky an
A scholar, editor, and museum executive. He is the editor of Potential Museums (Paradis, 2018) and of Under Discussion,The Encyclopedic Museum (Getty, 2021), the author of Living Museums (Hatje Cantz, 2020), the co-author of The Transitory Museum (with Emanuele Coccia, Polity, 2018) and of La Magie du Musée (with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Philippe de Montebello, Manuella, 2021). Dr. Grau currently serves as head of contemporary programs at the musée du Louvre, after serving in the same capacity at the musée d’Orsay, and, previously, as a guest curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Asena Günal
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Betti-Sue Hertz
She worked as an editor at İletişim Publishing House from 1998 to 2005. She started working as the programme coordinator of Depo Istanbul in September 2008. Günal is the co-founder of Siyah Bant, a research platform that documents cases of censorship in the arts in Turkey, and was a fellow of the Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability programme at Columbia University in 2014.
Betti-Sue Hertz
Terri Gordon-Zolov
Betti-Sue Hertz
Director and Chief Curator at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University since 2019. Her curatorial and scholarly work focuses on the intersection of critical visual culture, transnational exchange and socially relevant issues. Hertz was Director of Visual Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from 2008-2015, and Curator of Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Art from 2000-2008.
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
At UNESCO, he was Editor-in Chief of the journal Museum, Director of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture and Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development. In 2002, Raj began teaching at The American University of Paris, where today he is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Policy Studies. Isar was also
At UNESCO, he was Editor-in Chief of the journal Museum, Director of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture and Executive Secretary of the World Commission on Culture and Development. In 2002, Raj began teaching at The American University of Paris, where today he is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Policy Studies. Isar was also an ‘Eminent Research Visitor’ at Western Sydney University and Visiting Adjunct Professor there.
Pamela Karimi
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
An associate professor of history of art and architecture at Cornell University. Her expertise lies primarily in the art, architecture and visual culture of the modern and contemporary Middle East. She is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (2013) and Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (2022).
Yann LeGall
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
Louisa Onuoha
A cultural historian at the Institute for Art History of the Technical University in Berlin. He co-edited the volume Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A guide to looted African heritage in museums (Pluto, 2024). His work investigates the enduring presence of colonial spoils of war from "punitive" expeditions in German museums.
Louisa Onuoha
Yudhishthir Raj Isar
Louisa Onuoha
Assistant Director, Museum Educational Services and Training, National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Oyo, Nigeria. A museum educator/curator, she combines research with active museum practice creating, and initiating various museum
programmes. Her research areas include topical and contemporary issues of preservation of intangible
Assistant Director, Museum Educational Services and Training, National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Oyo, Nigeria. A museum educator/curator, she combines research with active museum practice creating, and initiating various museum
programmes. Her research areas include topical and contemporary issues of preservation of intangible heritage, restitution, decolonization, transatlantic slave trade and human trafficking
among others.
Sandhini Poddar
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Sandhini Poddar
London-based art historian and Adjunct Curator at Large at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, where she contributes to acquisitions, special exhibitions, and scholarship on artists from the Global South. Previously, Poddar served on the curatorial team of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of its Asian Art Initiative wherein she org
London-based art historian and Adjunct Curator at Large at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, where she contributes to acquisitions, special exhibitions, and scholarship on artists from the Global South. Previously, Poddar served on the curatorial team of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of its Asian Art Initiative wherein she organised ground-breaking projects across the Guggenheim’s constellation of museums, including, Anish Kapoor: Memory; Being Singular Plural; V. S. Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life, and Zarina: Paper Like Skin.
Kamini Sawhney
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Sandhini Poddar
Distinguished museum professional with over 15 years of experience. Elected to the Board of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) in 2022, she is the first Indian in this role, advocating for the perspectives of the global South. As the founding Director of the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Ben
Distinguished museum professional with over 15 years of experience. Elected to the Board of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) in 2022, she is the first Indian in this role, advocating for the perspectives of the global South. As the founding Director of the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru, Kamini led its launch and vision, creating an inclusive space that sought to democratize access to art.
Bernd M. Scherer
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Former Director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin from 2006 to
2022. He has been an honorary professor at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin since 2011. Since April 2024 he has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena. He initiated and directed a number of
international
Former Director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin from 2006 to
2022. He has been an honorary professor at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin since 2011. Since April 2024 he has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena. He initiated and directed a number of
international cultural projects: among others the “Anthropocene Project”, the “100 Years of Now” project and “The New Alphabet”.
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Formerly an associate fellow in DGAP’s Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology since March 2023. Before that, he was Young DGAP Fellow at the Impact & Innovation Lab. He conducts research on the opportunities and risks of video games for foreign and security policy. Shamsrizi also conducts research at Humboldt University,
Formerly an associate fellow in DGAP’s Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology since March 2023. Before that, he was Young DGAP Fellow at the Impact & Innovation Lab. He conducts research on the opportunities and risks of video games for foreign and security policy. Shamsrizi also conducts research at Humboldt University, where he co-founded gamelab.berlin, and teaches at Leuphana University Lüneburg on the societal impact of cultural technology and gaming. He was responsible for a study for the Federal Foreign Office on the potential of gaming for Germany’s public diplomacy during its last EU presidency.
Erin L. Thompson
Erin L. Thompson
Erin L. Thompson
A PhD in Classical Art History and a JD, both from Columbia University. She is a professor of art crime at John Jay College (City University of New York), where she studies the damage done to cultural heritage and communities through looting, theft, and deliberate destruction of art (as well as its deliberate preservation). She is the au
A PhD in Classical Art History and a JD, both from Columbia University. She is a professor of art crime at John Jay College (City University of New York), where she studies the damage done to cultural heritage and communities through looting, theft, and deliberate destruction of art (as well as its deliberate preservation). She is the author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors (Yale, 2016) and Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments (Norton, 2022), and is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.
Adam Weinberg
Erin L. Thompson
Erin L. Thompson
Adam D. Weinberg has been a prominent figure in the arts since the 1980s, when he started his career at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as Director of Education and Assistant Curator. He joined the Whitney in 1989, initially as Director of its Equitable Center Branch at 52nd and Seventh Avenue. After three years as the artistic and p
Adam D. Weinberg has been a prominent figure in the arts since the 1980s, when he started his career at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as Director of Education and Assistant Curator. He joined the Whitney in 1989, initially as Director of its Equitable Center Branch at 52nd and Seventh Avenue. After three years as the artistic and program director of the American Center France in Paris, he returned to the Whitney in 1993 as Curator of the Permanent Collection and was elevated to Senior Curator in 1998.