Activist art experienced a new beginning in the Seattle anti-globalization protests of 1999, but it didn’t reach a zenith until Occupy Wall Street, a movement initiated by artist-activists and structured around performative gestures and iconic imagery for the media age. In this moment, activist art and radical ideas briefly invaded the mainstream imagination, and the art world proper opened its doors–momentarily–to activist art, having been forced to acknowledge its presence. Art critic and historian Yates McKee recounts this turn of events, and argues that it has fundamentally changed contemporary art, whether or not the art world knows it yet.