The Carnegie International Looks Back at Itself
Hyperallergic reviews the 59th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, describing it as reflecting on the exhibition’s 130-year history while commenting on authoritarianism and militarism. The article revisits the 1999 controversy around Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” (1996) during the Brooklyn Museum’s “Sensation” show, including criticism by then New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and condemnation by Thomas Cardinal O’Connor, as well as a vandal attack and Donald Trump calling the work “degenerate.” It notes that Ofili’s “The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars” (1998), supported by dried elephant dung, appeared in the 53rd Carnegie International and is now on view again in a history-focused gallery; the museum purchased the work in 1999. The Carnegie International, founded in 1896 by Andrew Carnegie, is presented as one of the longest-running international contemporary art exhibitions, with only the Venice Biennale being older by a year.
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This story was covered in Venice on the Edge, Museums Get Schooled