Donation Cubes

Donation Cubes is a group of works by the American artist Jonathan Horowitz consisting of clear acrylic donation boxes on white plinths, each labeled with the name or logo of a real organization. Visitors could put money into the box of their choice. Horowitz reinstalled them in his exhibition Occupy Greenwich, which opened to the public by appointment only, alongside earlier works including his Free Store and a statue of Hillary Clinton. The exhibition's exact dates and venue have not been confirmed here.

What you are looking at

A transparent cube sits on a plain white pedestal against a grey floor. Through its walls you can see a loose heap of banknotes, mostly U.S. dollars, crumpled and tossed in by visitors, filling the bottom of the box. On the front of the cube, printed in pale lettering, is the logo of Planned Parenthood, the American reproductive health organization.

The form is identical to the donation boxes found in museum lobbies, and that is deliberate. The cube is a minimal sculpture, close to the clean geometric boxes of 1960s Minimalism, but it is also a working collection box whose contents grow, or fail to grow, with each visitor who passes.

Choosing sides

The point of the work becomes clear when several cubes are shown together. Horowitz dedicated them to organizations across the political spectrum, among them Planned Parenthood and the National Rifle Association. Each visitor's donation becomes a public political act, visible to everyone in the room, and the relative heights of the piles of money record the leanings of the audience. Showing them in a wealthy setting under the ironic title Occupy Greenwich, a nod to the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, sharpened the joke about money, art and politics.

Horowitz and politics

Horowitz, born in 1966 and based in New York, has made American politics a central subject, from works on presidential elections to the bronze statue in Hillary Clinton Is a Person Too and the poster-style We Fight to Build a Free World. See also his participatory Black Dot Project and the artist page, Jonathan Horowitz.