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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Jenny Holzer: Light Line

Jenny Holzer, Untitled (Selections from Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, The Living Series, The Survival Series, Under a Rock, Laments, and Child Text), 1989.

Until Sept 29
1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128, USA

“I want people to think of the common good, the common weal,” Jenny Holzer told The Guardian in 2023. Born in Ohio in 1950, the artist has always brought politics and social issues into her work. Holzer responds to situations as they unfold, such as the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and the brutality of the Iraq war. She showed her art on the street and in public spaces before presenting it in museums. Her text-based installations often use technology to urge people to question the truisms they are exposed to in the age of information. A 1989 installation at the Guggenheim saw Holzer’s electronic text scrolling along the museum’s spiral ramp. Now this new Guggenheim exhibition reimagines that older one, with expanded content. —Jeanne Malle

Photo: David Heald/© Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, and Jenny Holzer