5.05.2010

The Art Workers' Coalition: "13 Demands" and "Does Money Manipulate Art?"

Eyeteeth's (informal and inadvertent, 'til now) Manifestos and Missives Week continues! After posting Bread & Puppet Theater's Why Cheap Art manifesto, Alex Dearmond's Made-By-Hand No Google Manifesto, and the text-based Situationist-inspired billboard hacks by the "Shoreditch Department of Advertising Correction," here's one from the exhibition Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Archives of American Art, on view through Sept. 27: the Art Workers Coalition's "13 Demands," delivered to then-MoMA director Bates Lowry on January 28, 1969.
13 demands
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As the exhibition catalogue explains, Greek artist Vassilakis Takis removed one his sculptures from MoMA, claiming that while the museum owned the work, he retained authority over how it should be presented. The statement lead to the formation of the Art Workers' Coalition, a group of artists that, as its first act, delivered its "13 Demands" to Lowry.

"While these demands were not met, the coalition became a force for change in the world," writes Liza Kirwin, the Smithsonian Archive's manuscripts curator, going on to address global and art world issues, from organizing protests against the Vietnam war to successfully pushing for the institution of free days at MoMA and other museums.

Below, via Primary Information, the group's 1969 document, "Does Money Manipulate Art?":
artist questions
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