Just about the time that we changed presidents on Monday, I found myself standing in front of “George Stinney, Jr.,” by Vik Muniz.  Since the wall text explains the art well, I’ll let it do its thing: “Within the space of three months in 1944, George Stinney, Jr., was arrested, accused of the murder of two young white girls, convicted in minutes by an all-white jury, and executed in an electric chair [in South Carolina]. At fourteen years old, he was the youngest person to be executed in twentieth-century America. Stinney’s conviction was vacated in 2014.”

Seventy years after he was murdered by the government, The Washington Post published a piece about the case,  which does not lack in disturbing details, among them this: neither George’s mother nor father were home when police came to his house and took him away in handcuffs.

Being at the New Britain Museum of American Art when it was hosting event-after-event for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was intentional. Being in the presence of this exact artwork at the precise time of the inauguration of a known racist could not have been better planned if I had tried.

The wall text explains: “Muniz composed this portrait of the young boy– modeled on his police booking photographs –largely out of snapshots of white American families celebrating occasions both grand and quotidian in which Stinney was never able to take part.”

There was nothing to be gained by tuning in to view the second inauguration of someone whose father was arrested at a Klan rally in Queens in 1927; he was not there in protest and his son has not, as far as I have seen, condemned his father’s role. There was nothing to be gained watching a convicted felon take office. I voted in November; my vote did not consent to this.

The museum, in promotion of the Vik Muniz: Extra-Ordinary exhibit used the image of “Double Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter and Jelly), After Warhol”. I appreciate the old bait and switch. Why not lure people in with a crowd-pleaser, with the familiarity of the Mona Lisa, with the Warhol take on the Mona Lisa, and with that staple of childhood lunches? Once through the door, show the artist’s range, which includes a commitment to social justice.

I don’t know if that was the museum’s intention, but subversive skills are something cultural workers should be honing as we enter these times.

Contemporary artists whose work is worth viewing are those who aim to be expansive. Kehinde Wiley is one who raised the bar, showing us what is possible, telling us to demand more from portraits. Vik Muniz does the same.

This exhibit is arranged by the artist’s different series of works. The room that welcomes is like a Bizarro Toy Store. The Matchbox car is neither matchbox-sized nor a model car exactly nor an actual car, but another thing. Opposite it, a triptych of “Horse,” “Toy Soldier,” and “Old Cheyenne,” presents a commentary — or just questions — about war through images made by carefully arranged plastic toy soldiers (and the other pieces in such sets). “Toy Soldier” is a remake of a photo of a child soldier in the Civil War who enlisted at 16 and was killed at 17.

Several walls apart, you have portraits of two boys who were separated from their families and had violence done to them. It feels unimaginable and current at once. One day after the inauguration, I received an email from the Bridgeport Public Schools outlining how they intend to keep students safe from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other government officials. One of the first steps: “If necessary, lock all exterior doors to prevent unauthorized entry and ensure the safety of students and staff.”

If Vik Muniz hasn’t yet, he could have a field day with images of ICE agents, the January 6th attempted self-coup, the Elon Musk Sieg Heil that was given during the inauguration and which as of publication, the ADL refuses to call it what it is or condemn it. The way in which all kinds of horrors are made a game of, swaddled in euphemism, whitewashed until we find ways to excuse the behavior could use confronting. Artists worth a damn ask us to do that confrontation.

From this image of plastic war, you are moved into a room where the familiarity of the Mona Lisa greets you with a smile– well, two, actually. On her right is “Che (Black Beans)” from the After Warhol series; on her left is “Action Photo (after Hans Namuth)”, the artist’s take on a photograph of Jackson Pollock dribbling paint around a studio. The image was created with chocolate syrup, then photographed.

From there are pieces of series dealing in sugar and diamonds. The latter make the faces of iconic actresses; the former, faces of children.

Then, there is the Pictures of Garbage series. With this he received help from catadores at a dump in Rio de Janeiro; they assisted in picking the objects out, then arranging them for the images like the one above (“Mother and Children”) and below (“The Gipsy”). The wall text explains that “Muniz then sold works in the series to benefit the catadores.”

He is not the only contemporary artist to work with trash. Kat Owens, a local artist, creates from plastic litter portraits of marine life who have been harmed by ingesting plastic. Mark Dion has made wunderkammer using plastic pollution. I am here for all of it, for all the artists playing with garbage. Trash is the medium of our time. It is the embodiment of The Anthropocene. Our overconsumption leaves art supplies on the beach, on the sidewalk, in every waterway imaginable.

Moving through the gallery, you come upon the disarming portrait of “George Stinney, Jr.,” and across from him, where his gaze would be, is “Jerusalem.” These two are from the same year, but in a different series.

Below is a close look at one tiny part of “Jerusalem.”

Beyond this are the series dealing in sand and cells. For these, the process is more intriguing than the final product. In the Sandcastles series, Muniz got laser-wielding MIT scientists to help carve images onto single grains of sand. In the Colonies series, the artist trained various types of cells to grow into patterns. These were magnified and photographed; or photographed and magnified. I won’t pretend to know the order that this happened in.

Then, the artist played with size in the other direction, using bulldozers to carve drawings for the Earthworks series. He took aerial photographs of the works. The image of a paper airplane made me laugh, thinking of how if archaeologists hundreds of years from now discovered it, what meaning would they ascribe to the design.

This exhibit — with works spanning 25 years — forces the viewer to constantly shift perspective, whether that means feeling like you’re looking at ancient mounds or trying to grasp the layers of choosing sugar for a medium or thinking about the way young people have been robbed of their innocence and their lives while others in their generation kept right on living, unaware and unaffected.

“Vik Muniz: Extra-Ordinary” can be viewed at the New Britain Museum of American Art through February 23, 2025. The images used in this post are meant to deliver an idea of what is there, but for the full experience where you can see detail and look without lots of light glare, go to the museum. Admission is free on Saturday mornings for those arriving between 10 and noon. If you have a Hartford Public Library card, you can get free museum passes to use any day.