Assembly Room

For Which It Stands is presented by Assembly Room, a curatorial collective and community founded in 2018 by curators Natasha Becker, Paola Gallio, and Yulia Topchiy to empower female-identifying curators living and working in New York City and beyond. Through collaboration and partnership, they advocate for inclusivity and equality in the arts, provide opportunities for professional enrichment, and offer compelling artworks, exhibitions, and public programs.

The Ford Foundation Gallery

The gallery space at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice is dedicated to presenting multidisciplinary art, performance, and public programming by artists committed to exploring issues of justice and injustice.

Guided by principles of inclusion, collaboration, and urgency, the Ford Foundation Gallery aims to tell stories that are underrepresented in traditional art spaces. Located near the United Nations, the space is situated to draw visitors from around the world and address questions that cross borders and speak to the universal struggle for human dignity.

Art at a Time Like This

Art at a Time Like This Inc. is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit art institution, founded by Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen, whose mission is to provide a platform for the free exchange of ideas at times of crisis. Launched on March 17th--the week that galleries and museums closed--ATLT presents exhibitions, live events, a daily newsletter and public art projects. This is not a commercial venture nor does it sell artworks. It is purely a place to create a new dialogue around contemporary art; a community to share anxieties, gain empowerment, or plan a revolution.

For Which It Stands is an experimental exhibition conceived by curators Emily Alesandrini, Natasha Becker, and Eileen Jeng Lynch to include and amplify the voices of diverse artists in the national conversation around equality. This collaborative and activist curatorial endeavor aspires to provoke intelligent debate and offer hope and affirmation.

The project foregrounds contemporary artists using the iconic American flag, loaded with centuries of convoluted history, to challenge hegemonic systems of power and create new symbols of national identity and belonging. Journalist Calvin Reid once said of artist David Hammons that his “great talent is in the ability to create new symbols from old symbolic material.” While traditional flags reinforce the boundaries of national borders, reinterpretations of the stars and stripes broaden otherwise rigid regional demarcations and overturn colonialist assumptions of identity. Imagined as a constellation, For Which It Stands is calibrated to encourage collaboration, partnership, and versatile modes of presentation.

The launch of For Which It Stands online in October 2020 was made possible with generous support from the Ford Foundation Gallery and Assembly Room in New York.