Politics and Art Mix This Campaign Season

With the presidential election less than seven weeks ago, the cultural scene in New York is full of hard-hitting political commentary. Karen Finley, one of the infamous NEA 4 black-balled by former North Carolina Sen. Jessie Helms in a tantrum about public funding of the arts in 1990, is back on stage with an over-the-top spoof of George W. Bush and Martha Stewart at Collective Unconscious through October 30. Another of the infamous NEA quartet, Tim Miller, is at PS 122, through this Sunday only, in his latest political striptease, in which he muses same-sex marriage, immigration injustice and his heretofore closeted love of showtunes. At the School of Visual Arts, Jerry Saltz curates a brilliant retrospective of the past 25 years of that venerable institution’s history.

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