Strikes, Committees, Boycotts: Art and Activism in New York c. 1968

The selection comprises of a number of photographs by a female photographer Jan Van Raay taken between 1969 and 1972. They follow the protests and activities of a small group of artists who called themselves the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG) in New York. The main characters in the GAAG were Jean Toche and John Hendricks and initially included Virginia Toche, Poppy Johnson and Joanne Stamerra. This smaller group often protested alongside the AWC (Art Workers’ Coalition) and the Art Strike (Art Strike against Racism, Sexism, Repression & War) against the war in Vietnam and other causes that New York City artist collectives found to have deep impacts on the art world. The nature of the photographs, particularly the angles and proximity from which they captured the events, as well as an article on the photographer’s work written by Lily Van Ginneken in De Volkskrant in the Netherlands in February 1980, suggest that she was in fact, a part of the protests herself as an artist. This embeds in them the quality of a kind of personal, visual diary of the activities of these groups rather than a formal narrative catering to a planned audience. One of the photographer’s quotes from the article sums up the atmosphere and intentions surrounding the photographs in this selection and the protests recorded in them: “The things that touched us didn’t have much to do with art as to what it had to do with the system and what was behind it.”