Public AHS Lecture by Rebecca Zorach: The Time is Now! Art and Political Movements in Chicago, 1965-1975
Artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s put their artistic training in the service of political movements for self-determination and political change, envisioning an art by and for “the people.” The challenges they faced and the strategies they tried remain relevant today. This talk chronicles key artistic creations and events of the period, but also highlights debates in which cultural workers grappled with differing positions on community, self-expression, and critique in their efforts to find the best way forward. It will also address parallels with current issues and the ways the challenges artists of the 1960s/70s faced remain relevant today.
Rebecca Zorach is the Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History at Northwestern University. She teaches and writes on early modern European art, contemporary activist art, and art of the 1960s and 1970s. Particular interests include print media, feminist and queer theory, theory of representation, the Black Arts Movement, and the multiple intersections of art and politics. Her books include The Passionate Triangle (2011), Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (2005). She co-edited The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago (2017) with Abdul Alkalimat and Romi Crawford.
Funding provided by the University Lectures General Fund and the Associated Students of Madison viewpoint neutral grant, with generous support from UW-Madison Department of Art History.