The Future Will Follow the Past: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz offers a visually striking and thought-provoking commentary on the state of America today. Horowitz, an artist distinguished for his critical engagement with politics and culture, has organized a series of installations by artists of diverse ages and backgrounds across generations. Works explore transformative changes the country has experienced since 2020, addressing racism, antisemitism, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and more. Learn more about the artist and exhibition below.
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Women, Art & Identity Series
Black History Month, February 2023
PRIDE Month, June 2023
Are you unable to visit us in person, or do you want to dive deeper? Enjoy the audio tour of the special exhibition from wherever you are!
Scan the QR code for access to the full tour featuring audio commentary from the artist Jonathan Horowitz, Erica 
Brown, Vice Provost and Inaugural Director of Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership at Yeshiva University, and one of the Museum’s founding historians Beth Wenger, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies/Moritz and Josephine Berg Professor of History.
Want a sneak preview? Check out these audio highlights:
Audio Tour Stop #10: Pink Curve
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Horowitz, an artist known for incorporating social issues into his practice, has designed a series of installations that include key works from his oeuvre and significant works by renowned artists across generations. In addition to Horowitz, artists featured include Adrian Piper, Ben Shahn, Tabboo!, Jenny Holzer, Elizabeth Catlett, Collier Schorr, Aya Brown, Malaquías Montoya, and Nicholas Galanin. An installation of commissioned posters by contemporary artists will include works by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Christine Sun Kim, Jeffrey Gibson, Kim Gordon and Jason Smith, Sable Elyse Smith, and many others.
“The Future Will Follow The Past builds on the Museum’s practice of inviting artists and creatives to reflect on and reinterpret our content,” said Dr. Josh Perelman, Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions and Interpretation, who has overseen the three major reopening exhibitions and installations. “Like The Weitzman itself, Horowitz’s installations emphasize how the story of Jewish life in America can serve as a starting point for exploring our connections and differences, participating in dialogue and debate, and sharing our lives and our dreams.”
As a “visual commentary,” Horowitz’s installations engage with the core exhibition’s major themes – including immigration and adaptation, tradition and change, and advocacy and service – and respond to the current intensification of xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry. Relevant, reflective, and surprising, they bring fresh, new layers of meaning to the experience of museum goers. Visitors will encounter them throughout the Museum, and each floor includes at least one large-scale work.
Several works from Horowitz’s “We Fight to Build a Free World” exhibition at New York’s Jewish Museum, originally scheduled to open in March 2020, are also part of this exhibition. Horowitz is creating new work about voting rights for the exhibition and new editions of his signature pieces, “Power” and “Pink Curve.”
Media inquiries: mediarelations@theweitzman.org
Join us at The Weitzman for a tour led by Jonathan Horowitz of this powerful exhibition and explore the dialogue created between the works of contemporary art and the themes, ideas, and events in the Museum’s core exhibition. Tours have limited capacity to enhance the visitor experience.
Select Sundays at 1:30 pm | April 23, May 21 & June 25
$20 Tour ticket – Buy your ticket
$15 Museum members – Reserve Member ticket
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Image above: Rainbow American Flag for Jasper in the Style of the Artist’s Boyfriend, 2013, © Jonathan Horowitz, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, photo by Thomas Müller
Audio Tour Images: Pink Curve, Jonathan Horowitz, 2010, Courtesy of the artist and The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT. Note: the work presented here is a replica of the original. Photo by Robert Hakalski. Untitled (August 23, 2017–February 18, 2018, Charlottesville, VA), Jonathan Horowitz, 2020, Courtesy of the artist Sadie Coles HQ and Xavier Hufkens. Photo by Robert Hakalski
Audio Tour Stop #15: Untitled