Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)

The art produced during the 1980s veered between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art historically aware. This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s provides viewers with an overview of the artistic production of these heady days, as well as impart the decade’s sense of political and aesthetic urgency by placing many of the decade’s competing factions in close proximity to one another. The exhibition is divided into four sections: The End is Near, Democracy, Gender Trouble, Desire and Longing. By crossing these wires the exhibition hopes to suggest that despite the claims of cynicism or overarching irony sometimes leveled at the work of this period, often what we find are artists struggling to articulate their wants, needs, and desires, in an increasingly commodified and seemingly impenetrable world. This group exhibition include art works by Keith Herring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lorna Simpson, Cindy Sherman, David Wojnarowicz, and Nan Goldin.