SEEKING COMMON CAUSE MACARTHUR FELLOWS PROGRAM AT 40 Abigail Winograd: Three years ago the McArthur Foundation invited me to propose an exhibition to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Fellow’s program. The invitation included an open-ended proposal to present a theme. I made a selection of artists and proposed an exhibition that uses the “commons” as a thematic umbrella to look at four areas of inquiry: human society and communication, the natural environment, the built environment, and identity and representation. The show was a response to what felt like, at the end of 2017 and start of 2018, a moment in which we were, as a society, grappling with the realization that what we had thought was common ground or a common understanding, was being called into question. CGN: One of the first exhibitions to open is Much Unseen is Also Here, which runs from June 3–August 29 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP). Can you tell me more about the process, and some of the conversations you had with the artists An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander and the curators? SHAHZIA SIKANDER, PROMISCUOUS INTIMACIES, 2020, PATINATED BRONZE, 42 X 24 X 18”, EDITION OF 5 WITH 2 APS. © SHAHZIA SIKANDER. PHOTO: JASON WYCHE, NEW YORK, COURTESY: THE ARTIST AND SEAN KELLY, NEW YORK.
By ANNA DOBROWOLSKI Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? These are just some of the existential questions tethered to creatives in any age, but this summer, as part of the upcoming multi-site exhibition Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, 29 artists add another question to the enduring list: Are we paying attention? The exhibition materializes as we emerge from isolation (and general art deprivation) to once again encounter artists’ creative solutions to contemporary issues. Abigail Winograd, MacArthur Fellows Program 40th Anniversary Exhibition Curator, spoke with me about some of the collaborative efforts involved in the project. CGN: 29 artists, 19 exhibition venues, and over a dozen research partners and community partners — in only three short years? Can you tell me more about Toward Common Cause and how the initiative unfolded? 42 | CGN | Summer 2021
AW: In the past couple of years, my conversations with artists An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander involved thinking through their identities and representation as women of color in this moment in history. It developed into a conversation about their relationship to America and American-ness. That was happening in the midst of debates about monuments; the whole world, it seems, has been experiencing this moment of iconoclasm. After the murder of George Floyd, we see monuments literally being pulled off their pedestals because we’ve reached this moment of reckoning. * Both artists were already questioning the role of monuments through their own media and practice—An-My Lê through a 19th century photography apparatus, and Shahzia Sikander through mixed media (drawings, video installations, and patinated sculptures). Since 2015, An-My Lê has been working on a large-scale photography project, The Silent General in which she explores the complicated relationships to landscape, war, and history. As part of her project, she documents the decommissioning of the statues of General Robert E. Lee and General P.G.T. Beauregard Monuments (2017) from their established locations to the Homeland Security Storage in New Orleans, where they were ultimately withdrawn.
