Art Workers Coalition Summary

In examining political agendas and critiquing art institutions and the power of the government, The Art Workers’ Coalition undertook a collective range of protests and political actions against these higher societies (Martin, 2004). On January 3, 1969, artist Takis Vassilakis removed one of his works from the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) exhibition “The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age” (1969). However, the board of directors refused this, even with the revolutionary proposition of that the “artist had the right to control the exhibition and treatment of his work whether or not he had sold it” (Lippard, 1973, p. 103), causing the discussion of forcing art institutions to allow artist participation in the management and how the …show more content…
The Art Workers’ Coalition was a “loosely structured pressure group”, with no designated leader, which organised meetings and demonstrations in which critics and artists discussed pressing changes on museum policies, such as creating the art world to be more accessible and representable to the broader economic cross-section of the public, such as black and Latino artists, and working people (Martin, 2004; Rasmussen, 2008). Therefore, the main goal of the Coalition to place enough pressure on art establishments in New York; their main focus was MoMA due to its seat in power and rank in the world. The Coalition’s choice in political power was to implement a “more open and less exclusive exhibition policy”, as well as introducing the moral stance on the Vietnam War which was occurring at the time (Rasmussen, 2008; Lippard, 1973). As well as critiquing MoMA, artists in the coalition critiqued local art museums, due to the museums being part of a political-economic system which was responsible for the Vietnam