Aggie

AGGIE is a feature-length documentary that explores the nexus of art, race, and justice through the story of art collector and philanthropist Agnes “Aggie” Gund’s life. Emmy-nominated director Catherine Gund focuses on her mother’s journey to give viewers a new understanding of the power of art to transform consciousness and inspire social change.

  • Catherine Gund
    Director
    Dispatches from Cleveland, Chavela, Born To Fly
  • Catherine Gund
    Writer
  • Catherine Gund
    Producer
    Dispatches from Cleveland, Chavela, Born To Fly
  • Tanya Selvaratnam
    Producer
    Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman, What's on Your Plate?
  • Geralyn White Dreyfous
    Executive Producers
    Fantastic Fungi, Where We Disappear, 16 Shots, The Great Hack
  • Jason Moran
    Composer
    Selma, 13th
  • Agnes Gund
    Key Cast
  • Darren Walker
    Key Cast
  • Glenn Ligon
    Key Cast
  • Thelma Golden
    Key Cast
  • John Waters
    Key Cast
  • Elizabeth Alexander
    Key Cast
  • Rajendra Roy
    Key Cast
  • Marina Abramovic
    Key Cast
  • Teresita Fernandez
    Key Cast
  • Julie Mehretu
    Key Cast
  • Abigail Disney
    Key Cast
  • Ava DuVernay
    Key Cast
  • Sarah Lash
    Sales Agent
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Genres:
    Art, Human Rights, Democracy
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 30 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    November 20, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    1,084,616 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Catherine Gund

Director:
Catherine Gund is the Director of Aubin Pictures, a New York based non-profit production company. She is an Emmy-nominated producer, director, writer, and activist. Her films - which include Chavela, Dispatches From Cleveland, America, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, What’s On Your Plate?, A Touch of Greatness, Motherland Afghanistan, Making Grace, On Hostile Ground, and Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance - have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums, and schools; on PBS, the Discovery Channel, and the Sundance Channel. Gund’s most recent projects include: Dispatches from Cleveland (CIFF, MSPIFF), a five chapter documentary that looks at the police murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and shows how people joined together to vote out the prosecutor who didn’t have their backs; Chavela (Berlinale, Hot Docs, Ambulante) a documentary about the life of the iconic Latin-American gender-bending diva, Chavela Vargas; and Born to Fly (SXSW, Full Frame, PBS), a documentary that pushes the boundaries between action and art, daring us to join choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her dancers in pursuit of human flight. Gund currently serves on several boards including Art For Justice, Art Matters, Baldwin for the Arts, and The George Gund Foundation. She co-founded the Third Wave Foundation which supports young women and transgender youth, and DIVA TV, an affinity group of ACT UP/NY. She was the founding director of BENT TV, the video workshop for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth. She was on the founding boards of Bard Early Colleges, Iris House, Working Films, Reality Dance Company, and The Sister Fund and has also served for MediaRights.org, The Robeson Fund of the Funding Exchange, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, and the Astraea Foundation. An alumnus of Brown University and the Whitney Independent Study Program, she lives in NYC with her four children.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

AGGIE is a feature-length documentary that explores the nexus of art, race, and justice through the prism of art collector and philanthropist Agnes “Aggie” Gund’s life. Emmy-nominated director Catherine Gund focuses on her mother’s journey to give viewers a new understanding of the power of art to transform consciousness and inspire social change.

The film opens with Aggie selling Roy Lichtenstein’s “Masterpiece” for $165 million to start the Art for Justice Fund. The history-making proceeds from one of the highest grossing artworks ever fuel a monumental effort to reform the American criminal justice system and end mass incarceration. Aggie’s action delivers a bold rallying cry to collectors and wealthy individuals to join her in doing more for the public good.

Aggie is internationally recognized for her robust and prescient support of artists and for her unwavering commitment to social justice issues. In the film, Nobel laureate Paul Greengard asks, “Why aren’t you a typical lady from Ohio?” The film goes on to explore how Aggie’s life radically diverges from the expectations of marriage, motherhood, and society life associated with wealthy white women of her era.

After falling in love with art as a high school student, Aggie discovers a new way of looking at the world. Art teaches her to see beyond the limitations of her environment and conditioning. It is through this lens that she finds comfort in being different and begins to ask her signature question, “Who’s not here?” Over the course of her life, Aggie devotes her attention to those who have often been denied their voices or rendered invisible: public school children, women artists, people living with HIV/AIDS, incarcerated people.

Aggie consistently defies expectations. Her inheritance and privilege afford her access to power and influence. What she does with that is both remarkable and unprecedented. When NYC school budgets are slashed in 1977, she starts Studio in a School to deliver high-quality arts education to public school students in the city. At a time when women are scarce in institutional boardrooms, Aggie becomes the President of the Museum of Modern Art. But that was not enough. Now, as an influential art collector and philanthropist, Aggie decides to sell a significant work of art, Roy Lichtenstein’s “Masterpiece”, to fund work led by formerly incarcerated leaders, artists, activists, lawyers, advocates, and writers in the fight for criminal justice reform and a reckoning with the history of slavery. AGGIE is a film about a woman making an indelible mark on the world. As Aggie turns 81 years old, we capture her legacy of activism reaching its crescendo.