MoMA Poll

The Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) members were outraged by MoMA Trustees’ attempts to thwart museum reforms and their decision not to co-produce the poster Q. And babies? A. And babies. (1969). As with many others, artist Hans Haacke held magnate Nelson Rockefeller, who was also Republican Governor of New York, primarily responsible and agreed with the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG) that for the Rockefeller brothers MoMA was a “disguise, a cover for their brutal involvement in all spheres of the war machine”. Haacke’s response via the interactive work MoMA Poll (1970), exhibited at MoMA’s Information exhibition (July 2 –September 20, 1970) required entrants to the museum to participate in a poll on Nelson Rockefeller’s attitude to President Nixon’s Indochina policy, which included the covert bombing of neutral Cambodia in March and May 1970. In the same context, at a mass protest against the latter, four unarmed students were killed and nine were wounded by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.