Andrea Bowers, March 2026:

Petra Kelly (1947–1992) was a leading figure of the modern environmental and peace movements in Germany and cofounder of the Green Party, now known as Alliance 90/The Greens. A tireless campaigner for peace, Kelly was born in Günzburg, Germany, and educated in the United States, where she was deeply impacted by civil rights activism and the practice of nonviolent resistance.

As a committed ecofeminist, Kelly argued that environmental destruction and militarism were interconnected systems of patriarchal domination. In the 1970s, she pushed the Greens to adopt gender parity and elevate women’s leadership, giving shape to the party’s egalitarian culture. Her activism emphasized moral conviction and grassroots engagement over centralized party control. While Kelly’s life ended tragically and early, her legacy endures in European Green politics and global climate movements. She inspired generations of activists to link environmentalism with human rights, peace, and feminist principles.

In 2020, I was invited to create a site-specific installation at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany, which had the misfortune of opening to the public as the pandemic closed borders. At the Abteiberg, Joseph Beuys’s 1982 Revolutionsklavier (Revolutionary Piano) has pride of place in the main gallery where my show was scheduled to take place. I had the choice of building a wall in front of it or incorporating it into the exhibition.

There is a tricky museological tradition of artworks whose positions are permanent within a museum space. As a feminist artist, I struggled with what to do with his installation. The easy choice was to critique Beuys, but I looked for a more complex alternative. Through my research, I discovered Petra Kelly and Joseph Beuys shared a strong friendship. They were comrades and collaborators; cohorts in the formation of the Greens. That an activist and an artist could successfully partner and work together is core to my own artistic practice.

Early Green activists met in informal settings, including private homes, community centers, and local halls. Kelly hosted gatherings and strategy discussions in her apartment, where, like in many homes in the ’70s, her piano stood as a central feature. After discovering that Kelly’s niece inherited her aunt’s piano, I asked if I could borrow it for the exhibition. I installed it next to Beuys’s piano, along with a video collage of news footage and rare interviews Kelly granted during her lifetime. Placing these historically significant pianos together highlighted the deep interconnections among eco-activism, art, and political movements in postwar Germany.

Later, inside the piano’s seat, museum archivists found a large collection of original sheet music for old revolutionary songs, acting as a poetic echo of protest and collective action. Throughout the exhibition, we invited local activists and musicians to come in and play the music.

For the exhibition at Glenstone, I sought a local instrument to stand in for Kelly’s original in Germany. Shepherd’s Table, a nonprofit organization in Silver Spring, Maryland that serves individuals who are experiencing food insecurity and homelessness, was suggested by the team at Glenstone as a possible partner. Through recessions, pandemics, and shifting community needs, Shepherd’s Table has never missed a single day of meal service in over 40 years. The nonprofit generously agreed to loan their piano as a surrogate for this installation. To ensure music could continue to enliven Shepherd Table’s program, Glenstone sourced and provided a replacement piano for the duration of the show.

I placed a work by Joseph Beuys in Glenstone’s collection, Silver Broom And Broom Without Bristles, 1972, nearby. The sculpture features two brooms—one functional, one bristle-less—used by the artist to symbolize the sweeping of forests and removal of protest signage where demonstrations often left behind physical debris.

To accompany the piano, we sourced sheet music for over 100 protest and folk songs illustrating the longstanding relationship between music, activism, and freedom of expression, including classics by Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Nina Simone.