“Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s” explores the iconic decade when artwork became a commodity and the artist, a brand. This expansive exhibition presents a fresh and focused history of the decade, bringing rarely displayed works from U.S. and European collections together for the first time since the ’80s. Hear from a selection of the artists on view: Julia Wachtel, R.M. Fischer, Erika Rothenberg, Annette Lemieux, Carol Ann Klonarides, Haim Steinbach, Frank Majore, Walter Robinson, and B. Wurtz. “Brand New” offers a fascinating alternative history of art in the 1980s by tracing how a pioneering group of young downtown artists appropriated the tools and psychology of growing consumer culture—advertising, logos, products, even cable TV—to change the landscape of the art world. Manufactured objects, such as vacuum cleaners and clocks, became vessels with complex meanings. Advertising and television emerged as rich new mediums for expression, and artworks themselves became branded products. Like today’s celebrity influencers, artists crafted branded personas to both market themselves and as a form of creative expression. FEB 14- MAY 13, 2018