NEW YORK, NY.- Sometimes, it is easy to see history being made—a rocket blasts off for the stars, or a cure spells the end of a disease. Other times, we need to look a little harder, though the impact we find may be equally great. The Weatherspoon’s new exhibition, Making [Art] History: Acts, Actions, and Reenactments, does just that, exploring in depth how various individual, collective, and artist-channeled methods of making art have played their part in multiple cultural and national histories. These creative efforts have resulted in artworks that both disrupted traditions within and set new directions for art history. At the same time, they engaged thematically and creatively with significant events and communal issues found in the history of this country and elsewhere. Making [Art] History is on view at the museum through July 18, 2026, and related programming will include a gallery talk on Friday, January 30, from noon to 1 pm with exhibition curator Elaine D. Gustafson.

Gustafson states, “This exhibition came about as I thought about the concept of agency, and it offers a unique way of looking at history through the lens of our collection. These artworks explore the role of individual, collective, and collaborative actions that have altered the history of art. At the same time, they deepen engagement with and knowledge of history itself.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, select artists began investigating new ways of making art. Instead of using paint or marble or wood, for example, they turned to film or time- based media to explore themes such as psychology, perception, and female subjectivity. Equally novel was their frequent decision to cast themselves as the protagonists of their films, innovatively blending the creator with the process and product of creation. In a similar vein, Ana Mendieta, Yasumasa Morimura, Laurel Nakadate, and Senga Nengudi have used their own bodies and personal experiences to explore and document notions of agency, fragility, resilience, and privacy/self-exposure.

Other contemporary artists, such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Lorraine O’Grady, and Lee Mingwei, have changed the course of art history by encouraging observers to become active participants in the art experience. The correspondence art of Raymond Johnson and H. C. Westermann likewise encouraged collective alliances, as does Thomas Daniel’s photography of enthusiasts reenacting moments of history as a leisure activity. Perhaps more reticent and contained are the calling cards that Adrian Piper passed out during her targeted performances. Lastly, artistic creation took a conceptual and less structured turn in the works of William Anastasi, Robert Buck, Andy Goldsworthy, and Robert Watts, all of whom served purely as the agents of action rather than its active creators.

Visitors to Making [Art] History will gain new insight into the impact of the personal and the collective on art history, as well as on all the other histories through which we understand art and ourselves. In addition to extended label copy for each work of art, four campus collaborators have provided additional interpretation.