An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2017

Aug 18, 2017–Aug 27, 2018

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Rather than relying on a single social issue as its organizing principle, this exhibition gathers artworks largely made after 2000 that evoke the “usable past”—the concept that a self-conscious examination of historical figures, moments, and symbols can shape current and future political formation. Many artists today are looking to the past to understand their present as well as to explore the possibilities, and the possible failure, of collective action. While some of the artworks demonstrate how memory can inform models of protest and activism now, others reveal how nostalgia can make it difficult to move forward. A 2005 film by Josephine Meckseper documents protests against the war in Iraq. By using Super 8 film, a format released in 1965, Meckseper imbues a contemporary action with a 1960s aesthetic. The film suggests both that yesterday’s counterculture can become today’s style and that we can learn from the past to address the needs of the present.

While initially resembling a purely abstract painting, Mark Bradford’s Constitution III (2013) contains excerpts from the United States Constitution. His embedding of this language within an aggressively worked surface suggests that the founding document is also a living one, subject to modification and debate. Similarly, Julie Mehretu’s Epigraph, Damascus (2016) embraces abstraction to convey content about the present. Under a swirl of black lines, the artist depicts architectural drawings of historic buildings in the Syrian capital, the center of a civil war since 2011. Presenting a place that is being transformed by violence, her work asks: Are we seeing buildings that are now gone? Could intervention have prevented this calamity? What do we learn from crisis?