Time Magazine features For Freedoms article by Hank Willis Thomas (BFA '99) and Emily Shur (BFA '98).
For Freedoms is a platform for creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. Inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (1941)—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—For Freedoms’ exhibitions, installations, and public programs use art to deepen public discussions on civic issues and core values, and to advocate for equality, dialogue, and civic participation.
For Freedoms was founded in 2016 by artists Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman.
"Today, 75 years later, those four images — Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want, Freedom From Fear — remain some of history’s most iconic visual representations of the American idea. But they were always more aspiration than reality. As TIME observed shortly after the posters first made news, Rockwell’s work was “a loving image of what a great people likes to imagine itself to be.”
One gap between Rockwell’s images and reality was obvious to artist Hank Willis Thomas and photographer Emily Shur. Though the four original images contain a relatively large cast of characters — including specific representations of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism in the “Freedom of Worship” tableau — that group barely brushes against the depth of American diversity at the time, much less today."
Department of Photography & Imaging alum Wyatt Gallery (BFA '97) was the project director and DPI alumna Marion Misilim oversaw its post-production.