Andrea Fraser. Art Must Hang
14.03 – 08.06.2025 Andrea Fraser. Art Must Hang
Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
The exhibition includes elements of nudity and sexual content. We kindly ask visitors to approach the materials with awareness. The exhibition is intended for adults.
In some rooms, the lighting is dimmed, which may limit visibility. Please move through the exhibition space with caution.
Some works presented on CRT screens are not recommended for light-sensitive individuals.
‘Now, when we need it most, institutional critique is dead, a victim of its success or failure, swallowed up by the institution it stood against.’
‘It’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution. It’s a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to.’
Andrea Fraser
The exhibition Art Must Hang presents a survey of the work of American artist Andrea Fraser, a leading figure in institutional critique within the art world, whose recent work also encompasses socio-political research, psychology, and the affective experience of increasingly polarized societies. Fraser’s oeuvre, comprising artistic works and numerous texts and publications, is pivotal in delineating the mechanisms of power and the ‘production of goods’ within contemporary art. For over three decades, she has examined the social, financial, and affective economies of cultural organisations, groups, and individuals. Her consistent artistic strategies draw upon Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture, psychoanalysis, and the principles of pluralism and democracy. Fraser’s writings are integral to her artistic practice. In the foreword to Museum Highlights (2005), a compilation of her essays and performance scripts from 1985–2003, which explores and reveals the social structures of art and its institutions, Bourdieu asserts that she can ‘trigger a social mechanism, a kind of infernal machine whose action causes the hidden truth of social reality to reveal itself.’ Fraser frequently employs appropriation and role-playing to critique various social roles — as exemplified by her performance Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989), which initiated her research into museum functions. In this work, she conducts a tour as the fictional museum guide ‘Jane Castleton’, describing commonplace objects with the same elevated language used for 17th-century Dutch paintings. This method serves to depict the social and political history of museums as spaces of latent social conflict.
Fraser’s interventionist art is concentrated within several fundamental artistic and intellectual domains: foremost among these is institutional critique, which involves the investigation of the cultural context of a specific location. Often characterised as a third-generation institutional critic and a second-generation feminist, Fraser integrates gender and sexual dimensions into the earlier critiques advanced by Hans Haacke, Daniel Buren, Carl Andre, and others. Another significant area of her practice is performance, in which she embodies diverse personas, frequently assuming the role of a discerning critic of the attitudes presented.
Fraser’s artistic practice can be accurately described as a form of cultural resistance, possessing an ethical, rather than a strictly political, orientation. Through her artworks and theoretical writings, the artist directly confronts the core mechanisms of the art world system. She examines themes such as the cultural value sustained by museum institutions, the artist’s role as a provider of goods and services within a commercialised art market, and the cultural sector’s complicity in sustaining racism and structural inequalities. Her work is marked by a notable self-reflexivity concerning her own position as an artist. Fraser’s strategies — performative interventions, critical-polemical addresses, dialogues, and monologues — collectively form a comprehensive and critical depiction of the existing art world system, stimulating debate and social exchange. They invite the viewer to engage in affective identification and empathy, extending beyond the conventional parameters of institutional critique.
Andrea Fraser. Art Must Hang
14.03 – 08.06.2025
Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
pl. Małachowskiego 3, 00-916 Warsaw
See on the map
Godziny otwarcia:
Tuesday – Sunday 12–8 p.m.
Thursday – free entry
ticket office is open until 7.30 p.m.