Artists Reclaim Lady Liberty
A Hyperallergic Fourth of July weekend roundup highlights critic Aruna D’Souza’s essay on the Statue of Liberty as a recurring tool for political expression in art, citing artists including Faith Ringgold, Claes Oldenburg, and Marta Minujín. The piece references Amy Sherald’s decision last July to cancel the National Portrait Gallery stop of her exhibition American Sublime after she said the Smithsonian Institution attempted to censor her painting of a Black trans woman, Arewà Basit, posed as the Statue of Liberty. The roundup also points to Ed Simon’s essay reassessing the Hudson River School as an early American movement that registered anxieties about industrialization, empire, and environmental ruin, while also reflecting settler-colonial mythmaking. Additional notes mention the Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s newly reinstalled Art of the Americas galleries with about 400 objects, fundraising art sales supporting aid efforts in Venezuela, and the closure of the contemporary gallery Lyles & King after 11 years.
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This story was covered in Museums on Tour, Money Haunts Masterpieces