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New Museum presents Your Land/My Land Election 12

New Museum presents “Your Land/My Land: Election ’12,” (2012) an installation by artist Jonathan Horowitz to coincide with the 2012 American presidential election season. The exhibition will be staged simultaneously at art museums across the US. It will be on view at the New Museum in New York from October 10–November 18, 2012.

“Your Land/My Land: Election ’12” is a reimagined installation originally presented by Horowitz during the 2008 presidential election. At each location (as in ’08), red and blue area rugs will divide the exhibition space into opposing zones, reflecting America’s color-coded, political, and cultural divide. Back-to-back monitors will be suspended between the carpets, with one broadcasting a live feed of Fox News, the other of CNN. The installation will provide
a location for people to gather and watch coverage of as well as talk about the presidential election. Its central trope is a divided United States swathed in only red and blue.

At the New Museum, the installation will occupy the Lobby, incorporating the front window and its view on to the street. The text “Your Land/My Land” will be adhered to the window, referencing This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie, which originally addressed the issue of land ownership. According to Horowitz, “If race and gender were the defining themes of the ’08 election, economic policy and economic disparity will likely be the defining themes of the 2012 election. The placement of the text on the window will extend this metaphor to the land of the museum and the land outside. To some, museums are decidedly blue—elitist bastions of liberalism—to others, they are lynchpins of a capitalist art market analogous to other capitalist markets that have been collapsing around us.”

The installation will be customized for each particular museum and attention will be drawn to the role that cultural institutions can play in a democracy. Over the course of the exhibition, some participating venues will offer voter registration and host presidential debate screenings. A website, accessible at each museum, will link the different locations and visitors will be invited to post comments. Visitors may also connect on Twitter using #YLML.

Participating venues include:
Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, MO – September 7–November 11 Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, NC – September 22–November 12 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX – September 28–November 11 Hammer Museum, Los Angeles – September 30–November 18
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT – October 5–November 24 New Museum, New York – October 10–November 18 Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA – October 12–November 11

The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum is a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas. www.newmuseum.org

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