Protest art is the creative works produced by activists and social movements. It is a traditional means of communication, utilized by a cross section of collectives and the state to inform and persuade citizens. Protest art helps arouse base emotions in their audiences, and in return may increase the climate of tension and create new opportunities to dissent. Since art, unlike other forms of dissent, takes few financial resources, less financially able groups and parties can rely more on performance art and street art as an affordable tactic.
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.
Lucy Rowland Lippard is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the "dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. She is the author of 26 books on contemporary art and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations.
The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference of Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..
The Art Workers' Coalition (AWC) was an open coalition of artists, filmmakers, writers, critics, and museum staff that formed in New York City in January 1969. Its principal aim was to pressure the city's museums – notably the Museum of Modern Art – into implementing economic and political reforms. These included a more open and less exclusive exhibition policy concerning the artists they exhibited and promoted: the absence of women artists and artists of color was a principal issue of contention, which led to the formation of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) in 1969. The coalition successfully pressured the MoMA and other museums into implementing a free admission day that still exists in certain museums to this day. It also pressured and picketed museums into taking a moral stance on the Vietnam War which resulted in its famous My Lai poster And babies, one of the most important works of political art of the early 1970s. The poster was displayed during demonstrations in front of Pablo Picasso′s Guernica at the MoMA in 1970.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic "maintenance". Since 1977, she has been the Artist in Residence (unsalaried) of the New York City Department of Sanitation.
Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement.
Third Text is a leading peer-reviewed academic journal covering art in a global context. After founder and editor Rasheed Araeen's earlier art magazine Black Phoenix, which started in 1978 and published only three issues, Third Text was launched as a theoretical art journal in 1987. The journal was edited by Jean Fisher (1992–1999), followed by Richard Appignanesi (2008–2015) and Richard Dyer (2015–present).
Andrea Callard is an American media artist connected with the artists group Colab in New York City.
May Stevens was an American feminist artist, political activist, educator, and writer.
Margia Kramer is an American documentary visual artist, writer and activist living in New York. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kramer recontextualized primary texts in a series of pioneering, interdisciplinary multi-media installations, videotapes, self-published books, and writings that focused on feminist, civil rights, civil liberties, censorship, and surveillance issues.
Alan W. Moore is an art historian and activist whose work addresses cultural economies and groups and the politics of collectivity. After a stint as an art critic, Moore made video art and installation art from the mid-1970s on and performed in the 1979 Public Arts International/Free Speech series. He has published several books and runs the House Magic information project on self-organized, occupied autonomous social centers. His partial autobiography was published in 2022 in The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest as Art Worker: Doing Time in the New York Artworld. Moore lives in Madrid.
Vernita Nemec, also known by the performance name Vernita N'Cognita, is a visual and performance artist, curator, and arts activist based in New York City. She earned her BFA at Ohio University in 1964 and has resided in New York City since 1965. She is also known for her soft stuffed sculpture, collages, artist's books, photographs, and installations. Nemec adopted the pseudonym "N'Cognita," a pun on incognito, as a way to honor artists who have not become well-known.
The Heresies Collective was founded in 1976 in New York City, by a group of feminist political artists. The group sought to, among other goals, examine art from a feminist and political perspective. In addition to a variety of actions and cultural output, the collective was responsible for the overseeing the publication of the journal Heresies: A feminist publication on art and politics, which was published from 1977 until 1993.
Virginia Maksymowicz is an American artist whose sculptural installations incorporate a variety of media. She lives in Philadelphia, PA and is married to artist-photographer, Blaise Tobia.
Blaise Tobia is a contemporary artist and photographer who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is married to sculptor, Virginia Maksymowicz. Together they maintain TandM Arts Studio.
Christy Rupp is an American artist and activist.
Sabra Moore is an American artist, writer, and activist. Her artwork is based on re-interpreting family, social, and natural history through the form of artist's books, sewn and constructed sculptures and paintings, and installations.
Cultural Correspondence was a journal of leftist politics and cultural commentary published from 1975 to around 1985. Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner were its founding editors.
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, educator, and activist. He is a Professor of Sculpture and Social Practice at Queens College, City University of New York, Co-Director of Social Practice CUNY, alongside professor Chloë Bass, and Headquartered in the Center for the Humanities, at the Graduate Center. Between 2011 and 2014 he served as a charter member of the Home Workspace Curriculum Committee in Beirut, Lebanon.
