BOOKS: Laura Raicovich

This event will also be live-streamed on this page, as well as on YouTube and Facebook Live. No registration is necessary.

Join us for Friday evening BOOKS, with writer and curator Laura Raicovich.

In this special BOOKS edition, Raicovich will launch her new publication Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso, 2021). This book delves into the growing tension between public expectations and the mandate, role and structural conditions of Art Museums in the United States and further afield. It discusses well known case studies such as the resignation of Warren Kanders from the board of the Whitney Museum on account of investments in the munitions industry and tear-gas, as well as protest efforts to address labour politics at museums in the US and internationally.

Culture Strike is also written on the basis of close personal experience. As Director of the Queens Museum in New York, Raicovich worked to bring her renowned social vision for art institutions that serve broad and transformative public interests. In 2018 she resigned, on account of a dispute with the Museum board and city officials in relation to the public accountability of the institution following the election of Donald Trump.

In addition to sharing a list of books that share Raicovich’s research and thinking, this event will launch the publication with conversation on the current impasses that institutions face and pose, as well as the possible role that they can serve in times of social transformation. This book launch tour occurs in partnership with Protocinemas (Istanbul).

“Culture Strike is a must-read account of how museums have positioned themselves as progressive while working hard to maintain the status quo. Written by someone who knows the ropes and drawing on interviews and conversations from all corners of the art world, it is a road map of how we’ve gotten where we are, a blueprint for change, and a love letter to museums for their potential to change the world if only we would think differently about them.”
— Aruna D’souza, author of Whitewalling: Art, Race, & Protest in 3 Act