The National Academy of Design is pleased to present Consequences: A Parlor Game, an exhibition of recent artwork by the 2021 class of National Academicians: Andrew Freear, Joanne Greenbaum, Peter Halley, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Joanna Pousette-Dart, and Gary Simmons.

Elected by the artist and architect members of the National Academy, the induction of this group of seven artists and one architect this past October follows a tradition that dates back to 1826, when the first class of new Academicians was elected by the 30 founding artists and architects. The election process ensures that the Academy’s membership represents the range of practices and sensibilities that define contemporary cultural production in the United States.

The title of the exhibition – Consequences: A Parlor Game – refers to the inspiration for the Surrealist game of “exquisite corpse” in which players add to an unfolding, collectively-derived text or drawing that reveals an unexpected result through chance.

Though Consequences is not organized thematically, much of the work in the exhibition reads abstractly, raising questions about the role of abstraction throughout art history and its potential in this moment: a time of social and political uncertainty and upheaval. Cited by the Abstract Expressionists as a universal language, abstraction frees the artist from the constraints of representation and narrative, giving way to an openness symbolic of freedom of expression, a distinctly American human right.