What we learn from artists is that you can imagine things into existence.

(Claudia Peña, Advisor and former Executive Director of For Freedoms)

The Center for Black Visual Culture, in partnership with For Freedoms, presents Where do we go from here? The four freedoms photographs in the 20 Cooper Square Gallery at New York University. Founded in 2016 by a coalition of artists including Hank Willis Thomas (TSOA ’98), Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery (TSOA ’97), For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. Since 2016, For Freedoms has collaborated with 1,000+ artists on 750+ activations including public art installations, billboard campaigns, exhibitions, and town halls across all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico; initiating a movement focused on inclusiveness, creative action, and open dialogue.

Created by Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur (TSOA ’98), in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery in 2018, the Four Freedoms Photographs are reinterpretations of American artist Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings; representing the eponymous Four Freedoms coined by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union Address —freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. By framing artists, activists, community organizers, and friends within these iconic works, For Freedoms modernized American imagery and sparked civic engagement by declaring diversity an essential and undeniable component of freedom.

Sixteen of the Four Freedoms Photographs will be on view for the exhibition. Once created, the images were reproduced and distributed nationwide as billboards, artworks, posters and more as part of the organization’s 2018 50 State Initiative - named the largest creative collaboration in US history and featured on the cover of Time Magazine. In 2023, the Four Freedoms Photographs traveled to Athens, Lisbon, Geneva and Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Museum of American History as part of the permanent collection of the US Department of State Art In Embassies Democracy Collection. This traveling exhibition commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the Office of Art in Embassies, established by President John F. Kennedy to create cross-cultural dialogues and foster mutual understanding through the visual arts. For Freedoms co-founder Hank Willis Thomas was also honored with 2023 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, an award created by Art in Embassies, in partnership with the Secretary of State to formally acknowledge artists who have played an exemplary role in advancing the U.S. Department of State’s mission to promote cultural diplomacy around the globe.

As a part of the exhibition, The Center for Black Visual Culture will also host a public panel discussion with For Freedoms artists and authors on their new monograph For freedoms: where do we go from here? on Tuesday, October 29th from 6-7:30pm at 20 Cooper Square. Featuring the authors, this panel will be moderated by the Director of the CBVC Dr. Deborah Willis, and followed by a book signing.

About For Freedoms

For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement, discourse and direct action. Founded in 2016 by a coalition of artists including Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery, For Freedoms is dedicated to fostering an environment of listening, healing, and justice through a wide range of creative engagement. For Freedoms works closely with a variety of artists, organizations, and institutions to expand what participation in a democracy looks like and reshape conversations about politics.

About CBVC

The Institute of African American Affairs (IAAA) & Center for Black Visual Culture (CBVC) at New York University are both interdisciplinary spaces for students, faculty, post-doc fellows, artists, scholars, and the public. Founded in 1969, IAAA’s mission continues to research, document, and celebrate the cultural and intellectual production of Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic world and beyond with a commitment to the study of Blacks in modernity through concentrations in Pan-Africanism and Black Urban Studies. The CBVC, expanding on that mission, is a space for scholarly and artistic inquiry (framing and reframing) into the understanding and exploration of images focusing on black people globally with critical evaluation of images in multiple realms of culture, including how various archives and the development of visual technologies affect the construction of representations.