A Revolution of Values

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

—Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” 1967

In April 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his searing “Beyond Vietnam” speech, declaring his opposition to the war in Vietnam and identifying militarism, materialism, and racism as the “giant triplets” imperiling American democracy. His call for a “radical revolution of values” reverberated beyond the pulpit and into the streets. Days later, at an antiwar march to the United Nations led by Dr. King, Vietnam veterans came together under the banner of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, transforming military experience into public dissent. 

A Revolution of Values begins from this historic convergence of veteran resistance, moral witness, and antiwar organizing, presenting veteran art as a site of critique and transformation. The exhibition brings together archival materials from Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Iraq Veterans Against the War with contemporary works by veteran artists who refuse to normalize militarism. Working across ceramics, sculpture, photography, video, and printmaking, these artists examine the psychic, political, and material afterlives of war while turning toward solidarity, accountability, and repair.

The works on view ask how those marked by military institutions can contest the systems that trained, deployed, and abandoned them. In doing so, the exhibition extends Dr. King’s call for a revolution of values into the present: away from domination and extraction, and toward practices of peace, justice, and collective care.

Featuring artists Drew Cameron, Brittney Chantele Aston, Rodney Ewing, Eric J. Garcia, GOODW.Y.N., Gina Herrera (Costa Rican and Tesuque Pueblo), Nathan Lewis, Eric Perez, Gerald Euhon Sheffield II, Ehren Tool, Yiran Zhang, and archival materials from Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Iraq Veterans Against the War.