Virág Molnár, Author at Public Seminar

Activism

Boarded Up

SoHo’s plywood protest art

July 2, 2020 • by Virág Molnár

Some New York retailers started boarding up their stores shortly after the city went into full lockdown. Some prosperous residents were offended that stores were expecting a starkly dystopian future to engulf the city, as the stay at home order stifled everyday urban routines. The mass protests that suddenly erupted ...

Hungary 1956

Sixty Years After

December 2, 2016 • by Virág Molnár

In a 1958 article “Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution,” published in the Journal of Politics and intended as an update to her seminal Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt called the Hungarian uprising of 1956 a “spontaneous revolution”: a rare occurrence that erupted unexpectedly, without a preceding and destabilizing ...

Writing on the Wall: Letters from New York to Berlin

Street art, urban art, urban interventionism

November 15, 2013 • by Virág Molnár

One day I decide to walk down from Penn Station, where I get off the train, to my office at Union Square, determined to soak in all the text that I can see on the streets. The distance I need to cover is about twenty blocks, and I quickly realize ...