New Message at Some Museums: Don’t Just Look. Do. – NRToday.com

Sex trafficking and an art exhibition may seem like an incongruous pairing.

In May, though, the Patan Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Nepal, will host The True Stories Project, presented by Art Works for Change, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, in collaboration with the Siddhartha Foundation, based in Kathmandu. The exhibition aims to address the disturbing and often below-the-radar problem of the trafficking of girls as sex slaves.

This is a human rights issue and a womens issue, said Randy Jayne Rosenberg, executive director and chief curator of Art Works for Change. Its an uncomfortable, powerful art exhibition. And its a way to raise awareness on this serious global problem of abuse and exploitation of children.

Although Rosenbergs group has been around for 10 years, the work it does has probably never been more relevant. In addition to the project on sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls, her organization works on projects that focus on biodiversity and the importance of nature; shelter in response to climate change; ethics; and the extinction of animal species.

When we started Art Works for Change, there werent a lot of content-driven or thematic shows, Rosenberg said. There was this impression that those types of exhibitions sacrificed the art for the theme, and the art may not be museum-quality.

That has changed significantly. Today, theres a lot of great work with artists addressing critical issues of our time, Rosenberg added. There are social situations in the world that are deeply affecting people. Our goal is to use art that is engaging emotionally and intellectually to inspire viewers to be agents of change.

In recent years, museums have been making a greater effort to have a voice in social activism and respond to pressing problems of the day. The big question is when and how art museums should take a public position and try to effect change, or at least initiate a community discussion on a topic.

Many museum specialists are guarded about their public relationship with contentious social issues and have usually refrained from taking a stand. To do so could close them off to potential audiences who might sense bias, or put their institutions at risk of being identified by potential donors as supporting politically offensive viewpoints.

Still, Jen Mergel, senior curator of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, said: My job as a curator is to make decisions about what to include, or what to show and what not to, and who to represent in our galleries for our public, and I see that as a political decision. The role of the museum is to present art, prompt dialogue.

In February the Museum of Fine Arts began exhibiting a rotation of posters from its collection by the Guerrilla Girls, the feminist activist artists group, whose members have always been anonymous. Collaborating since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls offer commentary on gender and racial discrimination in the art world, but also make observations on topics like homelessness. Their imagery and commentary originally appeared as advertisements, signs, placards and fliers for buses and bulletin boards.

Eight posters from the museums 88-piece portfolio have gone on view as part of the exhibition Political Intent. Mergels favorite is an enlarged print of a dollar bill with a dotted line marking off about one-third. The text below is: Women in America earn only two-thirds of what men do. Women artists earn only one-third of what men artists do.

Mergel said: You cant un-see it. Its not just the condition of women artists, but women across the country. To me, artists like the Guerrilla Girls are putting an idea forward that is timely and urgent, manifestations that really speak to the zeitgeist of the time.

New museum-sponsored activism is showcasing art not just in museum settings, but also on the streets.

The community becomes part of the process, part of the storytelling, said Rosenberg of Art Works for Change in Oakland. When we bring a show to a museum, we look for community-based partners, or ask museums to play that role in the outreach and utilize what activist groups already exist in the community. Were not an activist group. We are an arts group.

In Philadelphia, the Barnes Foundation is showcasing how more than 50 international artists engage with communities in Person of the Crowd: The Contemporary Art of Flanerie, through May 22. The artists works touch on such issues as gentrification, gender politics, globalization, racism and homelessness.

Person of the Crowd also includes a series of performances on the citys streets by artists like Sanford Biggers, an interdisciplinary artist based in Harlem, New York, who works in film, video, sculpture and music, and Tania Bruguera, a Cuban performance artist. Billboards and street poster projects by artists are also part of the exhibition and entertainment.

Man Bartlett, a New York-based multidisciplinary artist, is recording the street performances throughout the run of the exhibition and inviting people to share their opinions of city life via social media, using the hashtag #personofthecrowd.

Bartlett is also working alongside Philadelphia-area teenagers to create videos documenting their experiences, inspired by visits to the citys public spaces. The evolving work is available on the projects website, personofthecrowd.org, and projected inside the Annenberg Court of the Barnes Foundation.

One challenge for museums in calibrating their social activism is the patina of elitism that clings to them.

We, of course, are aware of the perception of institutions like museums as being elite and not for all audiences, Mergel said. I personally believe were already acting on this. The partnerships we reach out to in our community are already bringing a more diverse audience into the galleries.

Mergel described an archival pigment print of a transgender woman, CeCe McDonald, made by Andrea Bowers, an artist based in Los Angeles. In 2012 McDonald was sentenced to 41 months in a mens prison in Minnesota for manslaughter. Called Trans Liberation: Building a Movement, its an arresting photograph, nearly 8 feet high by 5 feet wide, which was acquired by the museum last June.

What we put on view does matter, Mergel said. Bowers uses this image to raise awareness of the social discrimination against transgender women. Amazing conversations between our museum visitors happen just in front of CeCe. If the image can make someone see something more discerningly, and with curiosity, instead of phobia that translates into our social lives. And that makes me feel very hopeful.

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New Message at Some Museums: Don't Just Look. Do. - NRToday.com