{"id":1693040,"date":"2026-09-18T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1693040"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:19:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:19:05","slug":"art-exhibition-review-turn-the-volume-up-nasher-museum-of-art-xuxa-rodriguez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/09\/art-exhibition-review-turn-the-volume-up-nasher-museum-of-art-xuxa-rodriguez\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nasher’s New Survey Treats Protest as an American Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bruce Davidson, Time of Change<\/em>, 1963. Gelatin silver print, 11 \u00d7 14 inches (27.9 \u00d7 35.6 cm). Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC. Anonymous gift, 2018.24.123. \u00a9 Bruce Davidson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With midterms right around the corner, there’s no better time to check out “Turn the volume up!” at the Nasher Museum of Art. Curated by the museum’s Xuxa Rodr\u00edguez, the new show is a survey of protest art drawn mainly from the permanent collection, spanning from the 1930s through today. Highlighting blue-chip practitioners like Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, the Guerrilla Girls and Chuck Close alongside less flashy names like Marielle Plaisir, Robert Colescott and Sam Durant, the exhibit is organized in six sections\u2014Remarks, Organize, Records, Dissents and Petition\u2014and explores how communities mobilize and advocate for justice.<\/p>\n

Just as speeches in Congress are put on record, so can average citizens go to City Hall or public meetings and say, “I’d like my remarks recorded.” Similarly, artists in the show have compiled their own remarks commenting on historical and current injustices, like Colescott’s The Wreckage of the Medusa<\/i>, his 1978 prologue to Th\u00e9odore G\u00e9ricault’s immortal 1819 painting, The Raft of the Medusa<\/i>, depicting survivors of a shipwreck that made headlines at the time. Colescott’s response is to change the context of the disaster to comment on his own country and Jim Crow era injustices that persist today.<\/p>\n

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