A timely exhibition at New York University celebrates the anti-fascist folk artist Woody Guthrie, despite the university's recent suppression of campus protests. The exhibit, titled Woody Guthrie: What This Guitar Might Do, is curated by four students, including Bea Esteves Mendez, 19, who discovered Guthrie's relevance to today's political climate through songs like All You Fascists.
A New Generation Connects with Guthrie
Bea Esteves Mendez, a sophomore at NYU, first encountered Guthrie's work when a professor played All You Fascists last semester. The upbeat folk anthem, written during World War II, links oppression abroad with domestic injustices like Jim Crow. Mendez remarked, “This could have been written today.”
The exhibit at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in downtown Brooklyn features a recreation of Guthrie's Coney Island apartment, complete with guitars, accordions, and archival materials from the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Over 130 reproductions of cartoons, notes, and lyrics fill the gallery, aiming to capture his explosive creativity.
Interactive and Political
Visitors are encouraged to play instruments, doodle, and write. Notepads include messages like “Long live Woody and what he stands for” and “You are the machine that kills hate.” The materials highlight Guthrie's political engagement, including drawings urging organizing and voting, and memorabilia from benefit shows against police brutality.
The tradition of protest music continues today with songs like Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Minneapolis and the Dropkick Murphys' Citizen ICE, both released in 2026 amid federal immigration force occupation in Minnesota. The students also selected tracks from Bad Bunny, A Tribe Called Quest, Jesse Welles, and Solange to show the genealogy of creative resistance.
Family and Legacy
Nora Guthrie, Woody's daughter, praised the exhibit's joyfulness. She noted, “Woody was very playful. A lot of people confuse other protest singers' seriousness with Woody's playfulness.” She discovered her father's work later in life after rescuing boxes of his notebooks from a Queens basement. The archive has led to collaborations with Billy Bragg, Wilco, and others.
Context of Campus Repression
NYU's heavy-handed response to protests against the war on Gaza casts a pall over the exhibit. The university withheld a diploma from a student who spoke about Palestine in 2025. The curators originally planned a different focus but shifted to emphasize anti-fascism. Mendez stated, “Even on NYU campus, it's been very real – the repression of any kind of connection to a political agenda. We were still able to make something that had a political connotation.”
Nora Guthrie concluded, “This is what creative resistance is. Even when we protest, it's joyful and loving. I'm sorry that NYU doesn't get it, but that's their problem.” The exhibit runs from 31 March to 15 May at the Clive Davis Gallery.
