Past Exhibitions

Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click “View” for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.

Name

Tony Hooker: The Greater Good – An Artist's Contemporary View of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Dates

February 23, 2002 to August 9, 2002

Description

The Tuskegee Experiment began in 1932 when the United States Public Health Service initiated a study of syphilis in African American males in Macon County, Alabama. With whatever intentions the study was begun, it evolved into a 40-year study of untreated syphilis in 412 African American men that likely resulted directly in the deaths of at least 28 of the subjects (who were never told what was wrong with them), despite the availability of penicillin during the latter years of the trials. The legacy of the study—exposed to the country in 1972 by an Associated Press reporter, acting on information from a Public Health Service employee—includes a lingering mistrust of the government and medical community on the part of many African Americans, and a marked silence from the doctors and government agencies involved on the ethical, moral, and humanitarian implications of the study.

Learn more about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment in this Wikipedia entry.

Tony Hooker's exhibition tells a story not well known to many Americans, despite a play and film on the subject in recent years and a presidential apology in 1997. The Greater Good explores the history of the experiment in a multimedia way, by means of photography, video, sculpture, poetry and music. The cumulative effect is powerful and sobering. Because of the moral, ethical, medical, legal, historical, cultural, and racial dimensions of Hooker's artistic reflections, an interfaith contemporary art museum at a Catholic university seems a most appropriate setting in which to experience the exhibition. It is our hope to encourage dialogue in the many schools and departments of the University, and in the larger metropolitan area as well. We must as a community assess the ramifications of the Tuskegee Experiment in our contemporary culture and work together to insure that such gravely misguided decisions not happen again.

Tony Hooker is an artist from San Francisco, CA. He received his MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. While his artwork is strongly based in photography, it frequently includes other media such as music, video, and installation motifs. His subject matter generally incorporates a social theme, asking the viewer to reexamine some well-founded ethical or moral principle.

This is a story of good intentions gone awry. Of small lies. Of deceit. Of suffering and heartbreak. Of questionable ethics. Of entanglements small and large. Of racism. And perhaps, most importantly, loss of trust among people, their community, and their government. And what belief was used to justify all this: The doctors said that if a few had to suffer for the greater good of the rest it was worth it! | Tony Hooker

above:
Installation view of Tony Hooker: The Greater Good at MOCRA, 2002. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

Related programming

Fred D. Gray - The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment - A Study That Should Never Have Occurred

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment - A University Response

Exhibition
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Tony Hooker: The Greater Good – An Artist's Contemporary View of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study February 23, 2002 to August 9, 2002 The Tuskegee Experiment began in 1932 when the United States Public Health Service initiated a study of syphilis in African American males in Macon County, Alabama. With whatever intentions the study was begun, it evolved into a 40-year study of untreated syphilis in 412 African American men that...
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Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds: A Fortieth Anniversary Celebration September 10, 2006 to December 17, 2006 After introducing St. Louis audiences to Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds in 2001 and reprising the exhibit in 2002, MOCRA is pleased to bring back the Silver Clouds on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their 1966 debut at New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery. Mercurial and buoyant, t...
Lewis deSoto: Paranirvana April 15, 2000 to November 05, 2000 Lewis deSoto’s Paranirvana, a 25-foot long image of the reclining Buddha made of a nylon skin and inflated with air, based on a well-known Sri Lankan sculpture. Paranirvana was created especially for the 1999-2000 Bay Area Now 2 exhibition, the second in a planned series of biennial exhibitions...
Robert Farber: A Retrospective, 1985–1995 November 18, 2000 to April 01, 2001 New York artist Robert Farber turned to art in his mid-30s and pursued it until his death in 1995 at the age of 47. His work has been shown in such distinguished insti...
Bernard Maisner: Entrance to the Scriptorium November 14, 1998 to June 28, 1999 The late art historian George Kubler wrote in The Shape of Time, "[Works of art] are like gateways, where the visitor can enter the space of the painter, or the time of the poet, to experience whatever rich domain the artist has fashioned. But the visitor must come prepared: if he brings a...
Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses March 8, 1998 to May 8, 1998 Curated by the distinguished art historian Peter Selz, Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses brings together 37 paintings and 20 sculptures of an artist who extends an American tradition-the distillation of the natural world into elemental forms. Kahn's antecedents in landscape painting include Albert ...
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Steven Heilmer: Pietre Sante \| Holy Stones February 7, 1997 to March 16, 1997 Expertly carved in Carrara and Vermont marble, the sculptures of Steven Heilmer juxtapose raw stone with highly finished sculpted fabric. In a dramatic partnering of surfaces, the “cloth” variously presents, wraps, confines, conceals and reveals roughly hewn marble, tangibly evoking the myste...
Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. Louis Collections April 4, 1997 to July 31, 1997 A vigorous cultural revival is evident today throughout Aboriginal communities in Australia. Artists at Utopia -- a tract of Aboriginal freehold land in the central desert of Australia -- have produced some of the most vital, exuberant, and distinctive imagery of the contemporary Aboriginal art m...
Manfred Stumpf: Enter Jerusalem September 26, 1997 to December 21, 1997 Born in 1957, German artist Manfred Stumpf studied in Frankfurt, New York, and Vienna. He is a versatile artist whoo has worked in the media of drawing and painting...
Frederick J. Brown: The Life of Christ Altarpiece December 2, 1995 to April 19, 1996 In 1992, prolific expressionist artist Frederick J. Brown offered to execute a large, multi-paneled altarpiece based on the life of Christ for the new Museum of Contemporary Religious Art. A generous gift of UMB Banks and the Crosby Kemper Foundations helped make that project a reality. ...
Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter June 30, 1996 to June 30, 1996 When appraising the long career of an artist, we tend to focus on the mature style, or the works best known by the public. Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter seeks to render another view of the artist's career, by presenting not only the large-scale allegorical works for which Boccia is kno...
Consecrations Revisited December 1, 1996 to February 5, 1997 Consecrations was the first group exhibition that put AIDS within a spiritual framework. Its 28 diverse artists, working in a range of media, expressed their experience with the disease in ways that reflected a profound empathy for anyone who has been touched or will be touched by the real...
Keith Haring: Altarpiece – The Life of Christ April 8, 1995 to May 7, 1995 Keith Haring's work is known throughout the world for its unique and immediately recognizable pictorial language. His often light-hearted art reaches beyond the confines of museums. It can be found in subways, churches, schools, on T-shirts and watches, and even at one time on the Berlin Wall. Ha...
Ian Friend: The Edge of Belief – paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, 1980–1994 May 19, 1995 to July 2, 1995 MOCRA is honored to present the first American retrospective of Australian artist Ian Friend. Common concerns thread their way through the diverse works in the exhibition: a sense of awe for landscape; an appreciation for ritualistic and protective instruments (e.g., the spears from New Guinea, t...
Eleanor Dickinson: A Retrospective August 26, 1995 to October 22, 1995 Throughout Eleanor Dickinson's work, the human form is seen as a reflection of the soul. Walter Hopps, former director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, has called Dickinson "one of the country's most powerful artists committed to figure drawing." The current exhibition presents works from three of...
Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists May 3, 1994 to June 27, 1994 The Minimalist movement, appearing in the mid-1960s and continuing well into the 1970s, is characterized by a reduction of forms to simple, basic geometric shapes, devoid of any ornamentation. Figuration was removed, and in some expressions of Minimalism, the artifacts look as though they were pr...
Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS October 15, 1994 to February 19, 1995 Consecrations is the first group exhibition that seeks to put AIDS within a spiritual framework. The 28 artists in Consecrations represent the religious, ethnic, cultural, sexual and geographical diversity of this country. Several of the artists are expressing first-hand experience ...
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Body and Soul: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater October 24, 1993 to December 19, 1993 Body and Soul celebrates 35 years of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and its exceptional contributions to contemporary culture. ...
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Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 8, 2011 to July 31, 2011 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 2, 2003 to May 11, 2003 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre January 18, 2000 to April 2, 2000 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre March 21, 1994 to April 26, 1994 Georges Rouault was born in working-class Paris in 1871, and apprenticed as a youth to a stained glass workshop. In late 1890, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-...
Visible Conservation September 22, 2017 to April 8, 2018 In 2016 MOCRA acquired Michael Tracy's powerful 1981 work Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador. With Visible Conservation, we gave visitors a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process of documenting and cleaning the work prior to its reassembly and first presentation at MOCRA. ...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection July 25, 2016 to September 3, 2016 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Doug DePice, Robert Farber, Luis González Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Chris McCaw, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection May 30, 2015 to August 2, 2015 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Junko Chodos, Doug DePice, Luis González Palma, DoDo Jin Ming, Dean Kessman, Frank LaPena, Daniel Ramirez, and Susan S...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection: The Romero Cross April 21, 2018 to July 28, 2018 Seven months of conservation work culminate in the first public showing at MOCRA of Cruz to Bishop Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador, a major mixed media sculpture by Michael Tracy (b. 1943), who first achieved international recognition in the 1980s, exhibiting in the 1982 Venice Biennal...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection March 28, 2006 to July 30, 2006 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Luis González Palma, Steven Heilmer, Anne Minich, Shahzia Sikander, Kazuaki Tanahashi, and other artists. above: Sr. Helen David Brancato, Crucif...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection June 20, 2004 to August 29, 2004 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Gryphon Blackswan, Daniel Goldstein, Steven Luecking, Gary Passanise, Susan Schwalb, Michael Tracy, and other artists. above: Anne Minich, Annie...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection November 4, 2003 to March 5, 2004 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Seyed Alavi, Nancy Fried, Donald Grant, Tobi Kahn, Virgil Myers, Shahzia Sikander, and other artists. above: Virgil Myers, Noah's Ark, 1999. Latex on wood ...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection January 7, 2003 to February 23, 2003 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Craig Antrim, Michael David, Sue Eisler, Adrian Kellard, Dean Kessmann, Anne Minich, Daniel Ramirez, and other artists. above: James Rosen, Sta. Cecilia, 1...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection May 6, 2001 to November 8, 2001 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems and some works on loan. Featuring works by Peter Ambrose, Lori Bert, Sr. Helen David Brancato, Daniel Goldstein, Carolyn Jones, Stuart Klipper, Horatio Hung-Yan Law, Thomas Skomski, and other arti...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection July 29, 1999 to December 22, 1999 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Michael David, Eleanor Dickinson, Steven Heilmer, Charlotte Lichtblau, J. W. Mahoney, Jeffrey Miller, and other artists. above: Michael David, Missing in Actio...
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection January 15, 1998 to February 22, 1998 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with lesser known gems. Featuring works by Gryphon Blackswan, Heidy Sumei Chuang, Greg Edmondson, Jeffrey Miller, Carl Tandatnick, and other artists. above: Gryphon Blackswan, Chasuble for Mass in the T...
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part Two – Three Major Installations April 18, 1993 to August 29, 1993 MOCRA's two-part inaugural exhibition features more than 100 works from an wide-ranging roster of artists working in styles ranging from traditional Western figuration to minimalist and geometric abstraction. The artists, generally in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to be disillusioned with the cel...
Beyond Words: Three Contemporary Artists and the Manuscript Tradition May 24, 2018 to November 12, 2018 MOCRA, in collaboration with the Special Collections division of the Saint Louis University Libraries, presents an exhibition in the Lambert Gallery at St. Louis Lambert International Airport as part of the ...
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Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest August 24, 2022 to October 16, 2022 MOCRA is pleased to present three new collage-paintings by Lesley Dill, an American artist who works at the intersection of language and fine art in sculpture, printmaking, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of t...
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This Road Is the Heart Opening: Selections from the MOCRA Collection August 24, 2022 to December 18, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated harmful systemic inequities and our responsibility to name and respond to them. Simultaneously, we are recognizing the importance of attending to our own well-being in mind, body, and spirit, a holistic vision of human wellness that Ignatian spirituality refe...
Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado: Cuentos Nuevomexicanos March 19, 2023 to June 25, 2023 Engaging a Living Tradition Artists Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado are forging new links in the chain of the continuing story of the people of New Mexico. Telles is firmly rooted in the Santero tradition (the making of santos, or images of saints), w...
Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual January 28, 2024 to May 19, 2024 Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual assembles the work of six intergenerational artists from across the country who use everyday materials, found objects, and elements of craft production to explore issues related to faith and spirituality, personal and cultural identity, and tradition and ...
Selections from the MOCRA Collection September 06, 2023 to December 17, 2023 Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with recent acquisitions and lesser known gems. In particular, we pay tribute to the late James Rosen (1933–2023). In a career spanning more than six decades, Rosen demonstrated a keen under...

Past Exhibitions

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