An exhibition of works by Hans Haacke from 1975–1985 examines the deeply intertwined networks of politics, capital, and corporate sponsorship in the art world. With a profound commitment to social issues and razor-sharp wit, Haacke critiques bankers, brokers, advertising moguls and fossil fuel industry executives, each of whom have sought to offset contentious financial gains via strategic investment in art institutions. This will be the first Haacke exhibition in New York since his retrospective at the New Museum in 2019-2020, and will include works from the distinguished collection of Gilbert and Lila Silverman, Detroit.

The exhibition will present key historical works, such as Seurat's "Les Poseuses" (small version), 1888-1975, in which the artist produced a detailed provenance of the small pointillist painting, noting the accretions of value and status it gained with each owner. Also on view is Haacke’s 1983 painting of arch-conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, depicted in oil paint and set in a gilt frame. Ceramic plates on the bookshelf behind Thatcher depict Saatchi & Saatchi, the biggest advertising agency in the world at the time and the team behind Thatcher’s successful election campaigns in 1979 and 1983. The painting is titled Taking Stock (unfinished) to indicate that the Saatchi’s role in politics and the art market was ongoing: the following year, Charles Saatchi opened his eponymous gallery, further implicating himself in art’s economic and ideologically driven circuits of distribution; in 1996, Maurice Saatchi was made a Lord in the British government.

Corporate art collecting and sponsorship of exhibitions by large corporations developed in the 1970s at a previously unimaginable scale. In 1975, Haacke took Mobil as a case study in a series of works that exposed the cause and effect of their self-insertion into art world narratives. Mobil's Mixture of Interest, Amusement, Raised Eyebrows, and Concern, 1985, documents Mobil’s response to Haacke’s scrutiny: claiming a copyright violation, Mobil demanded that the Tate, a beneficiary of their sponsorship, cease the distribution of images of Haacke’s work. With characteristic sarcasm, Haacke reproduced the correspondence alongside his “offending materials,” laying bare the antidemocratic dangers of corporate power in the art world.

Adopting the language of corporate life to expose its influence is a favored method of Haacke’s. In On Social Grease, 1975, and Tiffany Cares, 1977–78 Haacke reproduces the musings of Richard Nixon, David Rockefeller, and Walter Hoving in magnesium and silver. Elsewhere, Haacke appropriates the advertising campaigns of influential corporations, manipulating them to reveal company secrets. The Right to Life, 1979, engages both labor and reproductive rights as they relate to the controversial “fetal protection policy” of American Cyanamid, the parent company of Breck shampoo. Overall, the exhibition provides striking evidence of the long and unresolved history of our current debates on such varied issues as reproductive rights, the undue influence of money on democratic processes, or the ethics of art collecting.

Hans Haacke (b. Cologne, Germany, 1936) has had one-person exhibitions at the New Museum, New York (2019, 1986); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2012); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2011, 1967); Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2006); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2001); Serpentine Gallery, London (2001); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (1996); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (1995); Centre Pompidou, Paris (1989); Tate, UK (1984); Renaissance Society, Chicago (1979); Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1979); Modern Art Oxford, UK (1978); and Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (1976), among others. In 2024, the artist will have a retrospective at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. Haacke has participated in international exhibitions including documenta, Kassel (2017, 1997, 1987, 1982, 1972); Lyon Biennial (2017); Venice Biennale (2015, 2009, 1993, 1976); Liverpool Biennial (2014); Mercosul Biennial (2013); Sharjah Biennial (2011); Gwangju Biennale (2008); Whitney Biennial, New York (2000); Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997, 1987); Johannesburg Biennial (1997); Sydney Biennial (1990, 1984); São Paulo Biennial (1985); and Tokyo Biennial (1970). He won the Golden Lion (shared with Nam June Paik) for the German Pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 1993.

Gilbert and Lila Silverman were steadfast supporters of the arts. In 1978 they began collecting work by Fluxus artists, amassing a vast archive of approximately 3,000 artworks, 1,500 publications, and accompanying correspondence. In 2008, they donated the Fluxus Collection to the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The family also gifted the Avalanche Magazine archive to the institution in 2005, and eight hundred works from their Instruction Drawing Collection in 2019. Gilbert Silverman, who died in 2016, was an honorary trustee of the museum, and a long-standing member of its Trustee Committee on Archives, Library, and Research, which Lila joined in 2015 until her death in 2020. Gilbert also served on the board of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum for twenty-seven years, from 1980–2007, and on boards and committees for the Detroit Institute of Arts.