Editing Hans Haacke (section)

===1980s===
With extensive research Haacke continued throughout the 1980s to target corporations and museums in his work through larger scale installations and paintings. In 1982, at the documenta 7 exhibition, Haacke exhibited a very large work that included oil portraits of [[Ronald Reagan]] and [[Margaret Thatcher]] in 19th-century style, facing on the opposite wall a gigantic photograph of the demonstration against nuclear arms held earlier that year—the largest demonstration in Germany since the end of the Second World War.  The clear implication, supported by Haacke's remarks, was that these two figures were attempting to roll back their respective nations to the socially and politically regressive, laissez-faire, and imperialist policies of the 19th century.

Becoming an increasingly strong critic of museums, Haacke wrote the polemical essay, "Museums, Managers of Consciousness," in 1984.<ref name=":0" />

In 1988 he was given an exhibition at the [[Tate Gallery]] in London at which he exhibited the portrait of Margaret Thatcher, full of iconographic references featuring cameos of [[Maurice Saatchi, Baron Saatchi|Maurice]] and [[Charles Saatchi]].<ref name="C4">C4 Contemporary Art. [http://c4gallery.com/artist/database/hans-haacke/hans-haacke.html "Profile: Hans Haacke"] Accessed October 14, 2010.</ref> The Saatchis were well known not only as art collectors on an aggressive scale, widely affecting the course of the art world by their choices, but also as the managers of Thatcher's successful, fear-based political campaigns as well as that of the South African premier, [[P. W. Botha]].