Artists and curators in St. Louis, working under the name New Red Order, are negotiating the return of a sacred Indigenous site. Can art world resources be leveraged for more than symbolic statements? A thought-provoking feature interrogates this question:
NRO’s increasing notoriety is due to several expansive projects in sites far outside the museum, with collaborators far beyond the art world. For their largest work to date, a 2023 Creative Time commission, they flipped the classic colonial World’s Fair model and built The World’s UnFair in an empty lot in Long Island City. In the center of the weedy lot, a goofy, disconcerting animatronic tree spoke with a goofy, disconcerting animatronic beaver about the history of private property (Dexter and Sinister, 2023); a five-channel video installation broadcast Jim Fletcher’s exhortations (Give It Back, 2023); and a stage hosted revolving conversations and performances. NRO’s projects often seem deceptively ad hoc or casual, when they are the result of intensive research, organizing, and recruiting. Asked about this playful approach, the Khalils refer to the “trickster element” of the Ojibwe cultural tradition.
When Adam Khalil—holding a red Solo cup and wearing his signature NRO-branded wide-brim cap—first mentioned the Sugarloaf project to me in fall 2022, I was not surprised by the scale of ambition. NRO has long insisted that art-world resources can be leveraged for material change rather than symbolic statements. At one point, they approached curators at the Whitney and asked whether the museum would consider handing over its Met Breuer building to an Indigenous collective. (In 2023 the Whitney sold it to Sotheby’s instead.) But I was surprised that Mellon had offered money for a Land Back cause—major funders can be skittish about involvement with such initiatives because of their sensitive nature—and impressed that NRO had made such a leap across the provocation-action divide. It’s one thing to run a tongue-in-cheek “Give It Back” campaign. It’s another to secure hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it back.
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