EMILY SHUR'S "FOUR FREEDOMS" SERIES HAS LAUNCHED AS AN NFT COLLECTION
In 2018, artists Emily Shur and Hank Willis Thomas, alongside Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery, gathered friends, artists, activists, and community organizers in Los Angeles to help them reimagine the iconic 1943 paintings of Norman Rockwell’s "Four Freedoms." The project—created in conjunction with For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action—offers a more inclusive image of America to the discussion of the core values outlined by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union Address: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
Many notable figures joined the project, including actors Rosario Dawson and Jesse Williams, Japanese-American filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura, musician and activist Kiran Gandhi, and figures from the art world such as feminist artist Michele Pred and Rujeko Hockley, a curator at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
Assembly Curated dropped an NFT collection featuring the 16 most iconic images from the series, which are now close to sold out in print edition. Each NFT also unlocks access to special For Freedoms events as part of their ongoing Another Justice initiative, and in the future, a percentage of each sale will go toward the upcoming launch of the Center for Justice.
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Read about “Four Freedoms” in Galerie magazine.
Exhibits
The images from "Four Freedoms" have been featured in exhibitions across the globe including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Cornell Museum of Fine Arts at Rollins College; at the "Visions of America" sale series at Sotheby’s, and at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. Moreover, the photographs from this series are part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, have been presented throughout the country on billboards, and on the cover of Time magazine. Below, a snapshot from when Emily visited Washington, D.C. to view her images included in Art in Embassies' 60th anniversary exhibition at the National Museum of American History and a gallery wall of her prints exhibited at Sotheby's for sale.
