How to Free the Art World From Its Neoliberal Capture
In “The Battleground of Art,” curator and activist Marco Baravalle dissects the art establishment's co-optation of radical politics and uplifts the stories of collectives that resist it.
We first met Marco Baravalle in 2015 at the 56th Venice Biennale, All the World’s Futures, when we were organizing with the Gulf Labor Coalition. The group and our autonomous direct-action wing, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.), had been invited by curator Okwui Enwezor to present our research and organizing against migrant worker exploitation in the construction of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. An artist boycott was underway, direct actions were escalating, and days earlier, on May 1, we had shut down the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Through Baravalle, a longtime researcher, curator, and activist, we encountered a network of autonomous spaces in Venice and Milan. These were not simply cultural centers; they formed the infrastructure for collective organizing, resistance, and enacting other worlds.
Eleven years later, The Battleground of Art: Radical Curating in the Crisis of Neoliberalism (2026) extends this praxis into an important and timely call to action. Drawing on his two decades of experience, Baravalle offers what we have called movement-generated theory and practice, rooted in the dialectic of doing and knowing. The book confronts the neoliberal capture of the art world, while also excavating histories and practices of abolition and autonomy that offer other possibilities.
