"It Often Rhymes" Group exhibit at The Current in Vermont.

Neon American Anthem (red), Nicholas Galanin. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, photo by Brad Trone.

BY DAVID JAGER September 19th, 2025

Mark Twain once said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” The Current’s group show takes this adage in stride, addressing our history and our current fractious state in its rhyming forms. From the ACT UP protests of the early 90’s, the pro-choice and anti-abortion wars, through the BLM protests into the present, this show is an echo of an earlier show at the Parrish Museum in 2022.

The roster is varied and impressive. It features Robert Buck, Janie Cohen, Nicholas Galanin, Ellen Rothberg, Dona Ann McAdams, and Hank Willis Thomas, best known as the Co-Founder of For Freedoms, a political artists collective whose work is also shown. The show delves into a compelling array of mixed media takes on the country’s fraught political climate along the themes of protest and social justice.

Dona Ann McAdams black and white photographs focus on dramatic moments in activist history. Her candid shots combine a nostalgic look backwards along with shots of more recent movements such as BLM. Her photo of an ACT UP banner hung in Manhattan’s ‘Grand Central Station’ stating ‘One Aids Death every Minutes’, takes us back to a time when AIDS was an epidemic of alarming and tragic proportions. A pivotal moment in the abortion debate is similarly framed: A priest debating a woman pro-choice protestor, shirtless except for tape over her breasts before a television camera. It’s a poignant moment of civility in a never-ending debate.

Dona Ann McAdams - Keep Abortion Legal, City Hall, NYC 1994 - © Dona Ann McAdams

Conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas provides two American flags under the name “Flag III”. Thomas often uses the American flag as a lens or prism through which to view the state of the American republic. Here through the Stars and Stripes we see the aerial shot of a crowd standing in a city. It’s an emphasis on what Thomas often references as the diverse and multi-perspectival aspect of American society: one’s position in a crowd inevitably affects one’s viewpoint. He also underscores America’s profound communal aspect, as much as it touts the individual.

Other works address the subtle paradoxes of protest culture. ‘Public Address’ by Ellen Rothenberg is a wall installation of protest signs. Affixed at varying heights, they combine the sloganeering language of protest with implied third person narration. What emerges is a political perspective lacking in todays discourse: ironic distance. We get a cinematic, out of body view of a protestor’s rage. Phrases such as ‘screaming with impotent rage’, ‘dishevelled after fighting’, ‘when attacking the police’ ‘ecstasy on arrest!’ Rothenberg paints a truncated filmic picture of political resistance.

 Ellen Rothenberg - Public Address ©Ellen Rothenberg 2008

Even so, the provenance is vague. Is the artist attempting a positive view of protest or perhaps arguing with its performative futility? Is political protest an effective and potent tool of speaking truth to power, or has it merely become another piece of public theater? The placard “ecstasy upon arrest!” suggests political protest is more self-fulfilling performative ritual.

In the show’s only neon piece, however, the anguish is real. “Neon American Anthem” by Nicholas Galanin is a text piece stating “I’ve Composed a New American National Anthem: Take a Knee and Scream Until You Can’t Breathe”. It’s the logical end game of the NFL kneeling trend first started by SF 49er quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. It is also an expression of political progressive frustration. The feeling of helplessness has become so extreme it has blossomed into a never ending howl.

For Freedoms weighs in with its updated take on Norman Rockwell’s iconic series on the four fundamental American freedoms. “Freedom of Speech”, for example, replaces the yokel of the original with Rosario Dawson rising to speak. Replacing a blue-collar worker with a millionaire movie star is an interesting choice, her positioning as a woman of color notwithstanding, but the man in front of her with neck and knuckle tattoos is a nice, contemporary touch. In “Freedom of Worship” Rockwell’s congregants feature a diversified crowd, including a Native American, a Muslim woman, and a Sikh man. In his thanksgiving dinner, or “Freedom from Want’ the collectively similarly replaces Caucasian faces with black and brown ones.

Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery of For Freedoms) Four Freedoms. Freedom From Fear

The most affecting is “Freedom From Fear”, which features a mixed-race couple putting their children to bed. The father, concerned, has a newspaper prominently visible in his hand, while the mother hugs her toddler tightly. Is the newspaper detailing a fresh atrocity or incident of politically motivated violence?  Is the mother clinging to her child with the knowledge that we live in a dangerous world? That aside, it is interesting that while the make-up of the individuals has changed, the artists have left Rockwell’s societal and contextual framing intact. Is this a tacit endorsement of Rockwell’s centrist, civic minded, populist vision for America, or it merely a parodic send up?

This is what, as whole, makes the show a welcome change from much of the one note political protest art that has characterized the genre. What The Current presents has some genuine bathetic notes of despair, but it also distances itself long enough from its concerns to take a cool, if not ironic, look at some of the problems we are now facing as a nation.