“Proposal: Poll of MoMA Visitors”

In Hans Haacke’s proposal to Kynaston L. McShine, the curator of the exhibition Information (MoMA, New York, July 2 – September 20, 1970), the artist describes his intended contribution “Poll of MOMA Visitors”: “Two transparent ballot boxes are positioned in the exhibition, one for each answer to an either-or question referring to a current socio-political issue”. By the time his interactive work, titled MoMA-Poll, 1970, was installed in the exhibition, protesting students had been shot dead in the USA in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and members of the Black Panthers killed by State forces in their beds. In his essay for the exhibition catalogue, McShine states: “if you are living in the United States, you may fear you will be shot at, either in the universities, in your bed, or more formally in Indochina”. Hence, Haacke’s actual question “on a current socio-political issue” became specifically related to the politics of Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, supporter of President Richard Nixon and a MoMA Trustee. Rockefeller, soon up for re-election, had not denounced the covert US bombing and invasion of Cambodia that had resulted in massive anti-war protests in the USA, including on University Campuses, and the New York “Art Strike” on May 22, 1970.