Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Surveillance is your Busywork)

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Artist Barbara Kruger (American, born 1945)American, born 1945

CultureAmerican

Titles

Untitled (Surveillance is your Busywork)

Date1983

MediumColor lithograph

DimensionsImage: 11 × 28 1/16 in. (28 × 71.2 cm)
Sheet: 11 × 28 1/16 in. (28 × 71.2 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Morris Weiner

Object number2023.248

Current Location

The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

Gallery 208

On view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionBarbara Kruger began her career in the advertising world, but she quickly changed professional directions, dedicating herself to art making with an emphasis on cultural critique. Her collages utilize ambiguous advertising images paired with direct, authoritative texts. In Untitled (Surveillance is your Busywork), the viewer is confronted with a statement, which Kruger notes is intended “to question and change the systems that contain us.” This series was produced as a project for the New York City Metro Transit Authority and was displayed throughout the city’s subways in the 1980s.
Provenance[Swann Auction Galleries, New York, Contemporary Art: Featuring the Collection of Norman Dolph, June 8, 2023, Sale 2640, lot 315]; purchased by MFAH, 2023.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

[No inscriptions recto or verso]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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