Michelle Hartney

www.michellehartney.com

Michelle Hartney is a Chicago based contemporary artist whose work addresses discrimination in art institutions and other issues such as women's rights.

 

#Metoo & Music

Michelle Hartney
2018

Bowie: Consensual Sex with a Child

Bowie: Consensual Sex with a Child

Kesha’s Accusations Against Dr. Luke: Sexual, Physical, Verbal, and Emotional Abuse

Kesha’s Accusations Against Dr. Luke: Sexual, Physical, Verbal, and Emotional Abuse

Elvis Used to Tell People He Liked to Look Out for Cherries – Underage Virginal Girls He Could Sleep With

Elvis Used to Tell People He Liked to Look Out for Cherries – Underage Virginal Girls He Could Sleep With

Iggy Pop: I slept with Sable when she was 13 Her parents were too rich to do anything She rocked her way around LA ‘Til a New York Doll carried her away, look away

Iggy Pop: I slept with Sable when she was 13 Her parents were too rich to do anything She rocked her way around LA ‘Til a New York Doll carried her away, look away

Ted Nugent: Well, I don’t care if you’re just 13, you look too good to be true, I just know that you’re probably clean... Jailbait you look fine, fine, fine...

Ted Nugent: Well, I don’t care if you’re just 13, you look too good to be true, I just know that you’re probably clean... Jailbait you look fine, fine, fine...

Jimmy Page Liked Them Young

Jimmy Page Liked Them Young

R. Kelly: Arrested and Charged for Possessing Child Pornography, Judge Dropped the Charges, Ruling Police Didn’t Have Sufficient Cause to Conduct Raid

R. Kelly: Arrested and Charged for Possessing Child Pornography, Judge Dropped the Charges, Ruling Police Didn’t Have Sufficient Cause to Conduct Raid

 

Separate the Art from the Artist

Michelle Hartney
2018

Michelle Hartney’s piece, Separate the Art from the Artist, is a series of wall texts that contextualizes the work of misogynistic artists, specifically Picasso and Gauguin. This series appropriates words from Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special Nanette, and Roxane Gay’s 2018 Marie Claire essay about the need to separate the art from the artist.

Hartney also installed texts next to the Balthus' Girl with Cat painting at The Art Institute of Chicago, informing visitors about the museums failure to provide more information about the painting and emphasizing the need for separating the art from the artist. In 2017, a petition initiated demanding the painting be removed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite gaining more than 8,700 signatures in a short amount of time, the MET ultimately decided not to remove the painting, and instead refers to the call for accountability as being an “opportunity for conversation.”

Read more about the Met’s decision to display Balthus' Girl with Cat painting here.

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 Correct Art History: The Truth Behind the Floating World

Michelle Hartney
2018

The audio guide, The Truth Behind the Floating World, actively challenges the histories that museums deem important, while they leave out vital information that is considered too taboo to discuss.

The #metoo movement birthed a cultural revolution that is slowly chipping away at the patriarchy. Millions of women have shared their stories about the sexual abuse and harassment they have endured at the hands of men. This movement inspired me to look deeper into the debate about whether we should separate the art from the artist. I became aware of the way cultural institutions routinely withhold or dilute information they provide at exhibitions. I was recently alerted to an exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago that presents Roger Weston’s collection of 17th century Ukiyo-e paintings from Japan. The museum refers to the “beauties” in these portraits as “courtesans, geishas, actors, or women in scenes of everyday life” in The Floating World, a pleasure quarter similar to what we know as the red-light district. The narrative offered by the museum focuses on the fact that the women possessed great beauty and impeccabile style. The museum fails to provide viewers the whole story. The audio tour created by The Art Institute of Chicago does not mention the brutal living conditions the women endured. One ipad in a corner of the exhibition offers an altered narrative of what it was like for the child sex slaves, who are referred to as “kamuro,” revealing only that children as young as seven were contracted to brothels by their impoverished families, stating “girls who showed promise were educated and trained to assume the role of courtesan, the highest level of prostitute.” Only one sentence on a wall label states that there was a wall and moat that prevented women from leaving the pleasure district. THE TRUTH: Many of the sex slaves were beaten, starved, suffered from sexually transmitted diseases, and if a slave died while they were imprisoned, they were buried in mass graves. Brothel keepers sometimes locked the prostitutes they owned in a box. If a child ran away back to her family, the parents were required to return their daughter back to the brothel keeper, as part of the contract. This alternate audio tour provides the truth about these artworks and includes an interview with Dr. Amy Stanley, a historian of early modern and modern Japan.


 
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