The Art of Democracy: War and Empire at Meridian Gallery

Curated by Anne Brodzky, DeWitt Cheng, and Art Hazelwood

September 4- November 4, 2008

Opening reception: Thursday September 4, 6-9 PM

Closing party on election night: Tuesday November 4, 6 PM - midnight

The Art of Democracy, is a national coalition of political art exhibitions all taking place at the same time in the Fall of 2008. The coalition includes more than thirty venues at present and continues to grow. There are exhibitions in every region of the country, in small towns and big cities. Exhibitions are being organized at university, non-profit and commercial galleries at cafes and so far one museum, the Loyola University Museum of Art, in Chicago. From New York to San Francisco, and Muncie to Las Cruces, and Atlanta to Seattle shows on the theme of the contemporary political scene are being organized.

Each exhibition will focus on art and politics in its own way. The Meridian Gallery exhibition is sub-titled War and Empire and will consist of work from the last eight years on that theme. More than forty artists will fill the three floors of the Meridian Gallery with powerful work that ranges from the immediacy of hard hitting screenprint posters made for the street, and documentary photographs of anti-war protests, to the richly developed range of paintings and sculpture made over a longer period of time. This exhibition seeks to put the most intensely felt art of the last eight years on display. And at the same time serve as a history of what has transpired over the Bush years.

In the Bay Area, besides Meridian Gallery, satellite shows each with their own focus will be held at: The San Francisco Center for the Book, the African American Museum & Library at Oakland, Addison Street Windows Gallery in Berkeley, Front Gallery, and Vulcan Gallery in Oakland, Warnock Fine Arts in San Francisco, and Mission Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco.

Meridian's Art of Democracy: War and Empire draws primarily on California artists including the work of such political standard bearers as Ben Sakoguchi, Jos Sances, Juan Fuentes and Favianna Rodriguez, as well as artists for whom social criticism is often central. Among these are Sandow Birk, Enrique Chagoya, William Wiley, Hung Liu, Bella Feldman, and cartoonist Patrick Oliphant. These include a lyrical poster on peace by the 90-year-old Will Barnet of New York.

In the 1930's artists organized Artists Against War and Fascism. There were thirty shows that opened all across the country on the same day with the same work, all prints. With the Art of Democracy we have about thirty shows now, with more coming and they are taking all different shapes. Unlike the Artists Against War and Fascism we are not limited to prints, but neither are we limited to physical space. We have billboards (in the works) we have street posters, cafes, museums, galleries, and an incipient online show.