The Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) and the press

The Art Worker’s Coalition (AWC) related positively to the underground/alternative press whilst maintaining a critical distance from mainstream art journals and established print media. One of its members, Irving Petlin, recalls, too, that TV news was much more important as a disseminator of anti-war activities than The New York Times, which the AWC saw as compromised by compliance with a conservative US Government agenda. The AWC’s mixed relationship with The New York Times is exemplified by contrasting examples: journalist Grace Glueck, who became a member of Women Artists in Revolution (W.A.R.) and wrote “Art Notes: Yanking the Rug from Under”, published in The New York Times on January 25, 1970, an article which focused on the AWC and Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG) protests in front of Guernica in MoMA in January 1970; and art critic Hilton Kramer’s more negative article titled “About MoMA, The AWC and Political Causes”, published in The New York Times on February 8, 1970. Kramer’s “Show at the Modern Raises Questions”, in the same newspaper on July 2, 1970, was highly critical of, for instance, Hans Haacke’s MoMA Poll (1970), included in the exhibition Information (July 2 – September 20, 1970). Kramer’s antipathy to politicised art associated with the AWC chimed with the comments of MoMA Board of Trustee President David Rockefeller towards these works, stressing the point in the letters he sent to John Hightower, the recently appointed MoMA director.