Fires Will Burn: Politically Engaged Art from the Permanent Collection

Works by politically engaged artists are well represented in DePaul Art Museum’s permanent collection, in part because by their very nature they transcend individual experience and address larger issues and concerns. Such works relate to a broad span of academic disciplines: they can be a window into a historical moment, perspective on a moral issue, a voice for the unheard. DePaul Art Museum’s holdings address a range of subjects, from racial prejudice (John Wilson’s searing Down by the Riverside and Roger Shimomura’s Yellow No Same) and the antiwar movement (Carol Summers’s Kill in Peace) to the toxic aftermath of colonial occupation (Manuel Alvarez Bravo’s photograph of a murdered striker), but the works share the belief that visual images can help bring about social change.