> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.urgentmatter.press/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # NYC’s 2025 election turnout inspired Nasher’s protest art show - URL: https://www.urgentmatter.press/nyc-2025-election-turnout-inspired-nasher-protest-art-show/ - Published: 2026-09-29T01:48:01.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-29T01:48:01.000Z - Description: The Duke museum will rotate about 100 works, most from its own collection, through the show's close in July 2027. - Author: Adam Schrader - Tags: Shows and Exhibitions, #public-access The curator of a new exhibition on protest and civic action at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art said New York City’s unusually high turnout in the 2025 mayoral election helped inspire the show. “It was inspired by the mayoral race and the historicity of it,” Nasher curator Xuxa Rodríguez told Urgent Matter. “I think what really stood out to me is that two million people in New York turned up for that mayoral election.” She recalled turnout in Durham's mayoral race at around 20%. Later, she saw a report that New York's turnout was the largest since 1969. The general election drew 2,215,088 voters, or 41.6% of registered voters, the New York City Campaign Finance Board's [2025 Voter Analysis Report](https://nyccfb.info/media/reports/voter-analysis-report-2025/?ref=urgentmatter.press) shows. The board called it the highest turnout in a city election in more than 50 years. Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won with more than 1.1 million votes, or 50.8%, the report shows. “When I saw the New York numbers, I was like, wow,” Rodríguez said. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/09/2018_24_16_v2_FINAL_o2.jpg) Bruce Davidson, **Time of Change*, 1963 – 1965\. Photo courtesy of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University The exhibition “[Turn the volume up!](https://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions/turn-the-volume-up/?ref=urgentmatter.press)” opened August 27 in Durham, North Carolina, and runs through next July. Rodríguez said her checklist includes about 100 works, with roughly half or fewer on view at any time. Rodríguez said the title comes from a phrase Mamdani used in his [victory speech](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/05/zohran-mamdani-victory-speech-transcript?ref=urgentmatter.press). Mamdani told President Donald Trump to “turn the volume up” after his election victory. The museum had an open slot for the fall that fell during the country’s 250th anniversary. “I thought this was perfect because it’s talking about participating in the shaping of the nation,” Rodríguez said. She first conceived a show about protest art because the collection has many works from demonstrations. The concept shifted as she examined the collection more closely. “The artists are showing these small actions that folks can take, much like the action of going to vote and using your voice through their artworks,” she said. The show is split into five sections: Records, Remarks, Dissents, Organize and Petitions. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/09/2006_7_1_15_v3_FINAL_o2.jpg) Kara Walker, **Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta,* from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War(Annotated), 2005\. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion/Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University Remarks holds Kara Walker’s 2005 portfolio “Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated).” In it, Walker screenprinted black silhouettes over images from Harper’s illustrated history of the war. “She gives her remarks by putting her silhouettes overlaying, showing what’s not being seen in the images of the war,” Rodríguez said. In one print from the set, *Signal Station, Summit of Maryland Heights,* a silhouetted figure strides across an engraved landscape. The museum is showing five Walker prints at a time and will cycle through the full set by the time the show closes, Rodríguez said. The Guerrilla Girls’ posters from the collective’s portfolio will also rotate. ## Sign up for Urgent Matter This article is provided free with the support of paying subscribers. Not ready for a paid subscription? Sign up for a free account today. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. “When you look at them in the context of the period presenting these statistics as artworks, it was radical that they said, here’s what we found, here’s the tally,” Rodríguez said. The museum holds nine prints from Bruce Davidson’s “Time of Change” series. Six will go on view, two at a time, Rodríguez said. One 1962 print shows a demonstrator holding a “Jim Crow Must Go” sign. She estimated the museum owns 12 to 15 works by photographer Leonard Freed. Asked whether any rotations were timed to the midterm elections, Rodríguez said no. “No, the rotations are following the needs of the objects themselves,” she said. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/09/2012_9_1_v2_Img20324_MSTR_o2.jpg) Thomas Hirschhorn, **CNN-CHAIN*, 2002\. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion/Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University Works on paper can only be exposed to light for a limited time, so each hangs for three to four months. Almost every swap is one-for-one from the same artist or portfolio, she said. The Organize section includes posters by Durham-area artist Bill Fick. Some urge people to vote, and others reference COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests. “You can take them off the wall and go out in the world with them or share and circulate them because they’re essentially flyers,” Rodríguez said. The final section, Petitions, includes Karla Diaz’s *Prison Gourmet*. In that project, Diaz worked with incarcerated people on a cooking show built from recipes they made with food from the prison commissary. “What does that mean if I’m part of this as a community member?” Rodríguez said. “What can we do to help?” Among the works included in the show is Sam Durant’s 2004 installation *…For People Who Refuse to Knuckle Down*, a steel and wood chain-link enclosure topped with a sign reading “OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW IS FREEDOM.” The show also includes Carrie Mae Weems’ 1989 *Ode to Affirmative Action*, which pairs paint on a vinyl record with a gelatin silver print, and Thomas Hirschhorn’s 2002 *CNN-CHAIN*—a cardboard chain wrapped in gold paper that runs more than 8 feet long. Diaz’s piece is one of several loans. Rodríguez said the yearlong run pushed her to borrow work the museum does not own, including pieces by Jordan Eagles, Holly Bass and Pepe Mar. “It’s also an opportunity to show a couple of works that maybe our guests would not be able to see otherwise, because they’re not in the permanent collection,” she said. Robert Colescott’s 1978 painting *The Wreckage of Medusa* is lent from a private collection, captions show. Two recent acquisitions are on view for the first time: Carlos Vega’s *Who is Malala* and Marielle Plaisir’s *J. Baker- Backlit*. Rodríguez said both came to the museum within the last year. The captions list both as 2025 gifts. Two works she wanted were unavailable because they must rest from light exposure. Hank Willis Thomas’ *Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Us Around* was on view for most of 2024 in her debut Nasher show, “By Dawn’s Early Light.” Wendy Red Star’s “Medicine Crow and 1880 Peace Delegation” series is resting through next summer. “But if I could show them, if they were out of the rest period, they would have been in the show,” Rodríguez said. Asked whether Duke administrators weighed in on the exhibition, Rodríguez did not address administrators directly. She described the show as part of the museum’s regular calendar planning. She said it runs alongside a display of Declaration of Independence copies tied to Duke’s We the People initiative, and alongside Nari Ward’s *We the People*. “So it kind of worked out like kismet,” she said. The Nasher opened in 2005 with a gift from Duke alumnus Raymond D. Nasher. It replaced the encyclopedic Duke University Museum of Art and has collected contemporary work since, Rodríguez said. She said the collection’s depth in social justice work reflects what artists responded to over those two decades, “not by purposeful intention.” “It’s almost like the collection holds a temperature or a sense of contemporary history,” she said. Asked whether she expected criticism of how the show is framed, Rodríguez did not say. She said she hopes visitors see themselves in the work. Wall text asks visitors questions such as “if you could leave your own marks, what would they be?” One of the last asks, “how are you showing up for your community?” Rodríguez said the show counters information overload. She cited doomscrolling, a term that would have puzzled people 20 years ago. “It seems like there’s a lot going on in the world, but you still can make a difference right now in your community, amongst your neighbors,” she said. “Like, you have agency.” *Urgent Matter is reader-supported. 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