This is a pioneering book-length study of Hans Haacke, one of the most important living political artists. Hans Haacke’s Double Agents examines how his conceptual works function as "double agents"—operating simultaneously as art while critiquing and exposing the political, ecological, and institutional systems that frame them.
Spanning Haacke's entire career, this study analyzes both canonical works such as MoMA Poll (1970) and GERMANIA (1993) alongside understudied projects, including his contributions to the 1968 Mexico Cultural Olympiad, the Tenth Tokyo Biennial (1970), and Arte de Sistemas (1971) in Buenos Aires. Drawing on new primary sources and significant archival research, the book illuminates Haacke's connections to international contemporary art, exploring the networks he formed and tracing his influence on younger political artists as well as Latin American contemporaries. Like chemical reagents, Haacke's works catalyze reactions that prompt audiences to interrogate power relations within and beyond gallery walls. They reveal what lies behind the institutional façade—a particularly relevant approach given today's increasing calls for museum accountability and the “ethical turn” in the art world.
The book will appeal to academic libraries, scholars, curators, and students engaged with global contemporary art, twentieth-century art, political art, and museum studies, as well as artists and art students interested in institutional critique and socially engaged practice.