The Walker Art Center presents This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s Examines the Changing Art World in a Tumultuous Decade on view through September 30, 2012.
Throughout the 1980s, a series of ruptures permanently changed the character of the U.S. art world. Art veered between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art-historically aware. Even as Reaganomics dramatically expanded art as a luxury commodity, postmodernism further challenged the very status of representation and shifted artists’ sense of their role in society. It was a time where people of color, women, and gay artists demanded to play an active role in the cultural conversation; photography challenged the primacy of painting and sculpture; the toll of the AIDS/ HIV crisis politicized a broad cross-section of the art community; and the rise of globalism sounded the death knell of New York’s status as the sole “center” of the art world. – Throughout the 1980s, a series of ruptures permanently changed the character of the U.S. art world. Art veered between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art-historically aware. Even as Reaganomics dramatically expanded art as a luxury commodity, postmodernism further challenged the very status of representation and shifted artists’ sense of their role in society. It was a time where people of color, women, and gay artists demanded to play an active role in the cultural conversation; photography challenged the primacy of painting and sculpture; the toll of the AIDS/ HIV crisis politicized a broad cross-section of the art community; and the rise of globalism sounded the death knell of New York’s status as the sole “center” of the art world.