In Venice and in Warsaw, nationalism only passes if the nation is in peril as it was in Wyspiański.
It should be within the resources of Pace and Olowska’s experience to advance her legend beyond the discretely marketable.
In the 1960s, the German Marxist activist Rudi Dutschke proposed that the road to the revolution would involve a ‘long march through the institutions’ first. A few decades on, Dutschke got what he wanted but the revolution isn’t coming. In its place, a reactionary backlash.
Knee-jerk accusations of fascist thought and the refusal to embrace aesthetic ambiguity have meant that that ‘the left can’t meme’. It’s all Walter Benjamin’s fault – but artist like Joshua Citarealla and Monira Al Qadiri offer alternatives.
Who really has a say in what museums do and for whom? Will museums heal the wounds inflicted on them and their audiences by the past decade’s political, social, and economic upheavals? At what cost?