‘Neutrality is a fiction’ when it comes to institutions, says Raicovich; it is a guise, as she makes clear in her forthcoming book Culture Strike (2021), for the defence of white male hegemony. In 2018 she left the directorship of the Queens Museum, New York, specifically objecting to the Israeli government hiring the museum for an event featuring US vice president Mike Pence, and more generally in dispute with a board that wanted to quell her political engagement. She is currently interim director at New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, dedicated to queer culture, where she has addressed in the programming (albeit remotely) how queerness intersects with race and class. But her real power lies in her readiness to engage in debate, most recently instigating a series of hot-topic Zoom discussions with curator Helen Molesworth – ‘an experiment in talking and listening’ – that kicked off with a conversation on the Philip Guston controversy and included Coco Fusco, Charles Gaines, Nikki Columbus and any of the over 450 people who signed up and wished to chip in.
The ArtReview Power 100 is presented by BMW Group Culture
