On Noah Becker

Mortality: A Survey of
Contemporary Death Art

by Robert R. Shane

This is a review of an exhibition that never took place. Mortality: A Survey of Contemporary Death Art, originally slated for spring 2020 at the American University Museum, was cancelled when the institution shut down in response to the coronavirus crisis. Now the exhibition exists in memoriam in the catalog intended to accompany it. One year and a half million deaths since the COVID-19 outbreak began in the United States, Mortality has yet to be resurrected, though its themes could not be timelier. It provokes a conversation within our frequently death-denying, capitalist culture that is desperately needed, especially during the pandemic of which it was itself a casualty.