21st Anniversary Preview

21st Anniversary 18 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com HAPPENINGS PRESSING ISSUES: Printmaking as Social Justice in 1930s United States Weisman Art Museum, 333 E. River Road, Minneapolis, MN Through May 16, 2021 For information, visit wam.umn.edu or call 612.625.9494 In the midst of the Great Depression, visual artists in the United States were put to work through the relief e orts of the New Deal, not only to provide a living wage but to bolster the spirits of the general public. Many used the opportunity to portray various scenes of everyday life through images of modern and rural landscapes, leisure activities, and industrial growth, while others directed their viewers’ attention to economic toil and key social issues. Pressing Issues: Printmaking as Social Justice in the 1930s United States brings together work by artists who, through their art, produced radical critical commentaries on the social injustices plaguing the country in their time. Relying primarily on rarely-displayed Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) prints, Pressing Issues includes approximately forty works organized into themes of labor unrest (exploitation, economic disparity, and gender inequalities), discrimination and racial violence, and reactions to the rise of fascism. It’s an especially timely show that connects this past to the present. e exhibit was curated by Kathryn Koca Polite, assistant curator, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, where the exhibition debuted in fall 2020. : Riva Helfond, Custom Made, 1938. Lithograph. Museum Purchase through the Richard M. and Rosann Gelvin Noel Krannert Art Museum Fund. Courtesy of Krannert Art Museum (2020-3-1). Chet La More, Civilians, ca. 1937. Lithograph. Allocated by the US Government, Commissioned through the New Deal art projects. Courtesy of Krannert Art Museum (1943-4-231). Herman Volz, Scab, 1937. Lithograph. Allocated by the US Government, Commissioned through the New Deal art projects. Courtesy of Krannert Art Museum (1943-4-452). Ida Abelman, My Father Reminisces, 1937. Lithograph. Allocated by the US Government, Commissioned through the New Deal art projects. Courtesy of Krannert Art Museum (1943-4-1).