Across the U.S., artists and organizations have organized more than 600 pop-up events, performances, readings, and other forms of creative protest as part of Fall of Freedom, a new artist-led movement that aims to activate the country’s culture community against growing authoritarian threats.
The nationwide program, taking place November 21–22, serves as “a cultural roadblock,” said the artist, curator and writer Accra Shepp, one of the project’s initiators. “You won’t be able to scratch your nose or turn your head without bumping into a movie, or a video on your phone, or something you read. It will be everywhere. You will be reminded that the rule of law matters and that the arts—they not only celebrate freedom of expression, they are the reason for freedom of expression.”
The initiative officially launches at the performance space National Sawdust on Friday, with a night of music and dance, but events are scheduled throughout the day and into the weekend. In New York City alone, there are nearly 200 projects taking place, ranging from a participatory art action by the cooperative ABC No Rio held in Madison Square Park, to a video installation hosted by the media arts non-profit Los Herederos in the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave subway station. A group called the NYC Resistance Salon is displaying artwork and political cartoons critical of the Trump administration on a roving digital billboard, and the Banned Book Brigade plans to wear sandwich boards bearing the covers of their favorite censored publications on the steps of the New York Public Library.
Some galleries and art spaces in New York are taking part or have submitted existing shows under the Fall of Freedom umbrella, including 601ArtSpace, Jack Shainman Gallery, Cristin Tierney Gallery, and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. Among the museums participating are El Museo del Barrio, which is hosting a retrospective of the influential Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco, and the Bronx Museum, which is presenting a show dedicated to the sculptor Reverend Joyce McDonald, a member of the activist organization Visual AIDS. The Public Theater is hosting a free screening of Ask E. Jean, a documentary about the journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued President Donald Trump for sexual assault.
Coco Fusco, still from Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Gray Associates.
One of the most high-profile events is Creatives For Freedom, a benefit concert held on Saturday night at Pioneer Works, headlined by the singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, with Mark Ronson, St. Vincent, Maggie Rogers, and other performers, which will raise funds for the ACLU’s efforts to protect civil rights.
“We had hopes, but we had no way of knowing what was going to happen,” Shepp said of the number of events that have been organized for Fall of Freedom.
The Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano, another initiator behind Fall of Freedom, said there was a lot of optimism early on, and that built as more and more participants joined a series of town hall meetings on Zoom. “We were hoping that people would respond to this idea of wanting to do something. We all are frustrated with what’s happening in the country, and frustrated that a lot of the institutions that we care about and often work with are cowering in silence, whether they’re universities or museums. People are afraid, and they’re self-censoring and silencing in different ways,” he said. And looking at the list of events, the dearth of major institutions participating in Fall of Freedom is notable.
“Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation,” the initiative states on its website.
Instead of waiting for institutions to step up, the artists decided to take matters into their own hands, and the result is a network of projects not just in liberal strongholds like New York and California, but in more conservative states, like Alabama and Texas.
A number of projects are planned in Washington, D.C., including a dance protest outside the Kennedy Center by recently terminated staff, and a guerrilla performance by the local collective ArtWatchV2.0, titled Gold is Gauche, which will involve a parade of artists dressed in opulent French courtly costumes passing out buttons bearing an image of Trump as Marie Antoinette. “We will proclaim to the people the satire of our gilded decline and, with camp precision, stage the queering of Trump’s ‘Big beautiful BALLS room,’ laying bare its cost—literal and psychic—to the American people,” the group said.
In a post on X, California governor Gavin Newsome posted an AI-generated portrait of Trump dressed as Marie Antoniette, writing: “TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS, ‘NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!’”
And in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed, artists are taking part in a pop-up exhibition at Huddle art space called Philadelphia Artists Resist, while the artist cooperative Muse Gallery is showing a large-scale quilt and hand-embroidered batik portraits by the artist Carolyn Harper depicting incarcerated individuals. A map on the Fall of Freedom website lists all the participating projects, allowing anyone interested in showing their support to find an event near them. “We’re hoping that people would be able to do exactly that: plug into what’s nearby, where they can connect with other artists or other people that are standing in their own power right now and doing it proudly and without fear,” Luciano said.
As for what comes next, both Shepp and Luciano hope the momentum of this weekend will continue to build, and more artists and organizations will join the initiative. All the work taking place over the next two days can serve as “a reminder that action is possible,” Shepp said, “that the courage to speak freely, to exercise one’s right as an artist, to be a participant, as a viewer in an artwork or action, this is what we’re celebrating, and that we shouldn’t be fearful.”
Luciano hopes that such an experience of collective solidarity “makes everybody stand taller” and that the institutions or groups that were tentative about joining this time gain the confidence to join in future events. “We all need to do something right now—the integrity of our institutions is on the line,” he emphasized.
Shepp added that this weekend could also serve as a wake-up call “for others who might see the political reality differently, those who feel comfortable with what’s been going on. They will not be able to ignore the fact that their goals and desires stand far outside of the Constitution,” he said. “The illegality that surrounds the present political moment, is just inescapable. People who seek to normalize it or trivialize it—it’s a weak attempt.”
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
