Arts and Design

Black Lives Matter tops art power list after year of driving change


Black Lives Matter has taken the number one spot in an annual power list which attempts to rank movers and shakers of the contemporary art world.

The movement tops the 19th Power 100 list published by ArtReview, one in which theorists, non-western art scenes and artists who have many strings to their bows feature heavily.

ArtReview said BLM’s influence this year had been unprecedented, and that it had brought and accelerated change at every level in the art world whether by statue toppling, raising the visibility of black artists, appointments or “the rush by galleries to diversify their rosters … in museums rethinking who they represent and how they do it”.

The movement had also shaped the work of many others on the list, said ArtReview’s editor, Mark Rappolt. “Art is about freedom of speech,” he said, “it is also about who has the ability to speak to the platforms that art creates and I think there has been something of a reckoning in that.”

Number two on the list is the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, which champions collaborative practice and will curate one of the world’s most important contemporary art events, Documenta 15, in 2022.

Ruangrupa is followed by the Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy, authors of an influential report on colonial-era artefacts and the need for restitution. At number four is #MeToo and at number five the influential US philosopher and poet Fred Moten.

The highest-placed individual British artist on the list, at 16th, is Steve McQueen, who this year filled Tate Britain with class photographs of London’s year 3 school pupils, had a retrospective at Tate Modern and released his Small Axe series of films for the BBC.

Steve McQueen on the red carpet at the Rome international film festival in October
Steve McQueen on the red carpet at the Rome international film festival in October. Photograph: Steve Bisgrove/REX/Shutterstock

Rappolt said issues of injustice, repression and colonialism were reflected many times in the list.

There was also a striking number of entries for people and collectives who do more than one thing. Forensic Architecture, for example, which is listed at 14th, is considered part of the art world but could just as easily be described as a group of investigative journalists or social justice campaigners.

Wolfgang Tillmans, at 23rd, is a Turner prize-winning photographer who is also chair of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and created the non-profit exhibition space Between Bridges.

“Collaboration and how we work together is one of the themes which goes through the whole list,” said Rappolt.

The 2020 list is the first not to be topped by an individual. Previous number-ones have included Damien Hirst in 2008, the artistic director of the Serpentine, Hans-Ulrich Obrist in 2009 and 2016, the German artist Hito Steyerl in 2017 and the head of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Glenn D Lowry, last year.

It was compiled by a network of around 20 unnamed people described by ArtReview as artworld insiders (and outsiders).

They would usually have run into one another once or twice a year at art events but that had not happened, meaning a process of Zoom meetings, emails and arguments, Rappolt said.

The Power 100 top 10

1 Black Lives Matter

2 ruangrupa

3 Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy

4 #MeToo

5 Fred Moten

6 Arthur Jaffa

7 Glenn D Lowry

8 Thelma Golden

9 Saidiya Hartman

10 Judith Butler



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