Forum or fortress?: artist-activism and the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1966-1976

© 2012 Dr. Caroline Veronica WallaceA case study of the Whitney Museum of American Art, this dissertation will frame the intense period of artist-activism in late sixties New York through a discourse of institutional critique. In the period from 1966 to 1976 the Whitney, along with artist-activist groups such as the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC); New York Art Strike Against War, Repression, Racism, and Sexism (Art Strike); the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC); and the Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee (Ad Hoc), was investigating and challenging the narrative role of artists within the Museum. This dissertation positions the changes in the Whitney’s architectural and exhibition structures in the sixties as a challenge to the Museum’s role as omniscient interpretive narrator. Subsequent artist-activist protests directed at the Museum are presented as developing this critique, by proposing the artist as actor, focalizer or narrator within the exhibition narrative. This approach privileges the activist demands for influence within the museum system, over their broader socio-political ambitions. For these activists, the Whitney was variously conceived of as a space for their art production, an arena for their political views, or a text for cultural representation. All three models conceived of the Museum as a space for multiple voices, a ‘forum’. This dissertation argues that the ideals of these artist-activist groups were increasingly incompatible with the restrictions of the Museum’s structure, resulting in the relocation of the activists’ ideals to new, non-museological art spaces. As a result of the divisive environment created by these aggressive and conflicting pressures, the Whitney repositioned itself as a ‘fortress’; preserving its collection, but becoming resistant to the pressure of artists. In this case study, the institutional critique of the late sixties and early seventies is posited as a dialogue between the Whitney and artists; where both were actively engaged in challenging the narrative and interpretive functions of the Museum