Main Gallery

‘Met Museum, you’re complicit’: artists and activists take over museum’s front steps with giant pro-Palestine quilt
Practitioner:
Palestinian Liberation
Date:
Mar 25 2024
Hundreds of artists, cultural workers and activists gathered on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in New York on Sunday (24 March), demanding that the most visited museum in the US publicly call for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza and commit to preserving Palestinian cultural heritage.
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Taking Feminist Battle to China’s Streets, and Landing in Jail
Practitioner:
Young Chinese Feminists
Date:
Feb 2 2012
The young Chinese feminists shaved their heads to protest inequality in higher education and stormed men’s restrooms to highlight the indignities women face in their prolonged waits at public toilets.
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Health Care Not Wealth Care: Posters on Health Activism and Social Justice
Practitioner:
Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the Esperanza Community Housing Corporation
Date:
Jul 1 2019
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the Esperanza Community Housing Corporation have combined forces to bring 75 powerful and engaging poster works on broad issues of health care to audiences traditionally excluded from the art world in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Both organizations have been in the forefront of social change for three decades.
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#IRUNWITHAHMAUD
Practitioner:
Akeem Baker with Go Fund Me
Date:
May 8 2020
The running world will come together for a virtual run on Friday, May 8, to celebrate and honor the life of Ahmaud Arbery, who was reportedly shot and killed while out on a run on February 23.
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Ricardo Levins Morales – Art for Environmental Justice
Practitioner:
Morales
Date:
Apr 27 2025
Based in Minnesota, Morales creates prints and posters that address environmental and social justice issues. His art is used in grassroots movements, combining vivid imagery with messages of resistance and hope.
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Soundsuits
Practitioner:
Nick Cave
Date:
May 3 1992
Nick Cave is an American fabric sculptor, performance artist, and dancer. He was born on February 4, 1959, in Fulton, Missouri. Currently, Cave lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as the director of the graduate fashion program.
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Bread and Puppet Theatre: Insurrection Resurrection Service Circus
Practitioner:
Bread and Puppet
Date:
Jul 1 2020
The Insurrection-Resurrection Service Circus is this summer’s [started in 2020 and is ongoing] contribution to the iconic Bread and Puppet Circus tradition beloved by audiences worldwide for nearly 2 generations — a bright, raucous melee of short acts governed by a brass band, addressing the heart of the current moment using diverse puppetry styles and spanning many moods, from slapstick to the sublime.
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Blurring Boundaries Between Art and Activism in Cuba
Practitioner:
Tania Bruguera
Date:
Jan 23 2015
MEXICO CITY — Of the half-dozen pieces that form Tania Bruguera’s series “Tatlin’s Whisper,” the one that the Cuban government silenced may have resounded most.
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Change the Ref Announces Penalty Flag for Change
Practitioner:
Change The Ref
Date:
Feb 12 2023
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- While the United States is getting prepared once again for the Big Game on February 12th, the event with the highest audience nationwide, few are aware that last year there were more than 45,000 gun violence victims, and just during the first month of 2023, there were more than 39 massive shootings in the country.
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Turning a public toilet into a spa
Practitioner:
Ruben Santiago
Date:
Jun 14 2007
For three days, Ruben Santiago installed, without any official authorization, a hydro-massage shower in a public bathroom in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. The installation also made available to users bath gel, shampoo and towels that were regularly replaced.
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Two Hats
Practitioner:
Ron Krielen
Date:
Jan 1 2014
Ron Krielen is a social designer and a taxi driver. He spent five years driving a taxi for elderly and disabled people. En route, he would get to know them and their individual situation. He realized that this kind of personal contact gave him a better insight into possible solutions than many of the healthcare providers who were actually assigned to each case.
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Shaming criminals in Argentina : "los escraches"
Practitioner:
HIJOS activist group and other argentinian activists
Date:
Jun 1 1995
Faced with a lack of prosecution of those accused of crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s military dictatorship, family members and descendants of the country’s estimated 30,000 disappeared took action.
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Bold Native
Practitioner:
Gather Films
Date:
May 10 2012
By Loredana Loy
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Retirement dinner turned into hilarious protest
Practitioner:
UK Uncut
Date:
Sep 23 2012
Activists gate-crashed a retirement dinner for outgoing HMRC boss Dave Hartnett in Oxford, presenting him with flowers and a fake award for allowing large companies to avoid paying tax.
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The Crossroads Project
Practitioner:
Laura Kaminsky, Rebecca Allan
Date:
Feb 9 2014
"The mandate for great and difficult achievement is manifest in the message coming from the science of sustainability and climate change. Yet information alone will not take us where we need to go; science needs the arts to compel a response. It is the synergy of these two great human enterprises that creates both intellectual and emotional clarity.
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Raise Your Umbrellas: How Denise Ho went from Cantopop queen to pro-democracy activist
Practitioner:
Denise Ho
Date:
Jan 1 2014
In Hong Kong in 2014 the song Raise Your Umbrella by Denise Ho and Anthong Wong became an anthem for the pro-democracy movement known as the Umbrella Revolution. The song was written after police fired tear gas into the crowds when protestors filled the streets.
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Ticketing Jessica Lappin
Practitioner:
undefined
Date:
Jun 16 2010
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
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Hatsune Miku
Practitioner:
Crypton Future Media and its official moe anthropomorph
Date:
Aug 31 2007
Miku is a Japanese virtual idol. She is 16 years old. Miku is created in 2007 and has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese.
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In China, Myths of Social Cohesion
Practitioner:
Chinese Government
Date:
Aug 18 2014
KASHGAR, China — They come for the camel rides, the chance to dress up like a conquering Qing dynasty soldier or to take selfies in front of one of the most historic Islamic shrines in Xinjiang, the sprawling region in China’s far northwest.
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Becoming a Statue of Japanese Comfort Woman
Practitioner:
Yoshiko Shimada (嶋田美子)
Date:
Nov 30 2011
‘Since Plotinus’, writes Joseph Tanke (2019, p. 486), ‘Western art has been consecrated to beauty, and beautiful art has been understood as the achievement of good form’. But alongside this interest in beauty and form, art has been committed to politics and perspectives, equity and rights. Consequently, and particularly since the start of the modern era, artists frequently initiate or participate in ‘difficult conversations’.
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