The October 2026 issue of the Brooklyn Rail carries an in-depth interview with Andrea Bowers, the Los Angeles-based artist whose work entwines art and activism. Speaking with the Rail's ArtSeen editor Andrew Woolbright, Bowers discusses the two major presentations anchoring her year: a museum survey at Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, running from March 2026 into 2027, and the solo exhibition "Democracy Needs Our Courage" at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, on view from 18 September to 31 October. Bowers traces her political formation to a childhood on the shores of Lake Erie. Born in 1965 to two union-member high-school teachers, she was making feminist zines by the age of seven and debating autoworkers at her family's kitchen table. The 1970 Kent State shootings and the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River — both seared into Ohio's collective memory — taught her early about the limits placed on protest and the long damage of industrial pollution. She credits her politicisation as an artist to education: CalArts, then twelve years teaching in the multicultural art programme Catherine Lord built at UC Irvine, where colleagues included figures from Thelma Golden's landmark 1993 Whitney Biennial. Later, teaching social engagement in Suzanne Lacy's public practice programme at Otis College of Art and Design sharpened her approach to working with activist campaigns — from Standing Rock to Occupy Wall Street — as a collaborator rather than an observer. On the Glenstone show, Bowers describes a sustainability-driven collaboration: rather than shipping Petra Kelly's piano from Germany, the museum borrowed a lookalike instrument from Shepherds Table, a Maryland nonprofit serving people facing food insecurity and homelessness, honouring the ecofeminist co-founder of Germany's Green Party. As co-chair of MOCA's Environmental Council, she has also brokered green-team exchanges between Glenstone and MOCA — part of a practice where, she says, the most meaningful work is often the least commodifiable.