NYAB Event - "Voices of Dissonance, A Survey of Political Art : 1930-2008" Exhibition

"Voices of Dissonance, A Survey of Political Art : 1930-2008" Exhibition

ACA Galleries

This event has ended.

For more than 75 years ACA Galleries has promoted Social Realism. Its early exhibitions defined the gallery's mission. Exhibitions such as Selections from the John Reed Club (1932), an organization which promoted Marxist artists, and Mexican Art(1937), which benefited the League of Revolutionary Artists, gave a platform for artists to express their views no matter how controversial.

In 1935 ACA organized the earliest meetings of the American Artists Congress which demanded increased public aid to artists, protested censorship and other attacks on civil liberties, and condemned Fascism. ACA helped to ease the frustration among artists having no other venue to deliver their message. Work by women, African-American, Chinese, Latin-American, Russian and Jewish artists were and continue to be shown regularly. ACA was and still is "the people's gallery."

ACA's promotion and support of political artists had severe consequences. In 1949 Congressman George A. Dondero of Michigan attacked ACA in a speech delivered on the House Floor of Representatives calling it "…the hub, the gathering point of Marxists in art, whose subtle, nefarious un-American schemes receive their prime incitement…." He went on to say the gallery, "…should be shunned like a plague center of infection…"ACA and many of its artists were blacklisted soon thereafter

Despite the political pressure applied during the 50s ACA stayed true to its roots and continued to showcase the finest American artists and art with a message. To this day ACA provides a venue for Voices of Dissonance and has stayed socially and philanthropically active by organizing benefits and raising money for numerous humanitarian, political and environmental causes.