LAUREN O'NEILL-BUTLER is a writer and editor. Her first book, Let's Have a Talk: Conversations with Women on Art and Culture, features nearly ninety interviews. A former Senior Editor at Artforum, she has also contributed to Aperture, Art Journal, and the New York Times. In 2020, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Allows us to see the historical moment we live in through the lens of past struggles. It is a much-needed inquiry into the tremendous possibilities of art then and now to engender powerful social transformation. -- Eva Díaz, Professor of the History of Art and Design, Pratt Institute. A wonderfully smart, readable and informative study of a topic that matters to almost everyone interested in art, which is more than enough to recommend it. But gems like the luminous chapter on Agnes Denes and the eye-opening revisionary discussion of her relation to Smithson make it something even better-essential reading. -- Walter Benn Michaels, author of <i>The Shape of the Signifier</i> In a deft and engaging account of artist-led activism in the us since the 1960s, Lauren O'Neill-Butler makes the case that artists bring something unique to struggles for social justice, alongside their passion and righteous anger: creativity. A necessary book as we find new ways to organize and resist. -- Julia Bryan-Wilson, professor of LGBTQ+ art history, Columbia university