Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Email
“Each professional sphere – so to speak – should make sure that its own house is in order. If business is trying to take over culture – the culture in which I am involved – well, I have to make sure, or I should try, to fend off this encroachment.” —Hans Haacke
Through installations, sculpture, and conceptual art, Hans Haacke (b. 1936, Cologne, Germany, lives and works in New York) has been a pioneer in the realm of institutional critique and political art for nearly 50 years. After early experiments in conceptual art in the 1960s, Haacke came to prominence with his infamous MoMA Poll of 1970, in the MoMA exhibition Information, which is thought to be the first exhibition of conceptual art mounted by a US institution. Recently, the New Museum announced that in October of 2019 it will launch the first major retrospective of Haacke’s work in an American museum in over 30 years – which, not coincidentally, was also at the New Museum in 1986.
Coming from Illuminations Media’s great State of the Art series, we have this clip which includes part of an interview with Haacke in 1986, as well as footage from his 1982 documenta 7 appearance, and his work MetroMobiltan (1985, and featured in the 1986 New Museum exhibition) which criticized Mobil’s sponsorship of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, presaging by 30 years many of today’s ongoing related controversies.
